Jim Browne has been programming and producing film and video projects in New York City for over 20 years. As a film programmer, he got his start(1989-1993) with the experimental film series, REEL TIME at Performance Space 122. After leaving P.S. 122, he started a touring film series called The People's Cinema. These programs often mixed live music with short films, programmed around specific themes.These shows played around New York City, and in venues in Chicago, San Francisco, Dublin, Ireland, Belgrade, Budapest and beyond.
He was the general manager and programmer for the Two Boots Pioneer Theater in the East Village of New York City.
In 2004, he produced and programmed the film component of the Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues & Ideas, a city wide cultural festival around NYC. He conceived and produced the Films To See Before You Vote Tour, a "film festival in a box" that traveled to 14 states before the 2004 presidential election.
He is the former Director of Theatrical Distribution for Plexifilm. He was a Programmer for the Tribeca Film Festival from 2006-2010. He has recently been named Programmer for the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.
He is a graduate of Bard College.
Tarek Salem moved to Brooklyn in 1999, after graduating from the Great Books program at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He earned a J.D. from Fordham Law School in 2004, having focused on Film and Intellectual Property law and worked in International Commercial Arbitration in Cairo, Egypt. He was a managing partner of both a retail clothing company and a property management venture from 2000 to 2006. He is currently a degree candidate at NYU's Media Management program. His favorite director is Werner Herzog.
Blandine Mercier's film career has involved working on feature films in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris. She has worked at a wide variety of independent production companies and, in 2006 produced the first edition of the Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. After obtaining her bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature from Sorbonne Nouvelle, Blandine defended her masters' dissertation, focused on the current state of independent film distribution, with honors at Sorbonne Nouvelle in 2008. In 2010, Blandine received a certificate in Business and Management of Entertainment from UCLA Extension.
