The Guests
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More announcements to follow…
Professor James Choi, Scholar-in-Residence
James Choi is a prolific, award-winning filmmaker with over a decade of film industry experience in Los Angeles having worked in representation, production and digital media.
He has a long history of collaborating and supporting young directors on their debut feature films. He has produced two award-winning feature films from first-time directors that premiered at South by Southwest - "Made in China" winning the Grand Jury Award and "Saint Frances" the Audience Award. The films were distributed by IFC Films and Oscilloscope Laboratories, respectively. Saint Frances was nominated for two Gotham Awards and the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards in 2021. James has also been involved in helping students produce their first feature films through Indie Studio, which he founded in 2017. Indie Studio is an initiative that provides financing and support to students at DePaul who are interested in directing and producing independent feature films. "Waiting for the Light to Change," the latest feature film to come out of Indie Studio, won the Grand Jury Award for Best Feature at Slamdance in 2023. Choi’s film “Resonancia” will hold its premiere at OIFF 2024. Choi will also serve as president of the awards jury and serve on a Producers Panel during the fest.
H.P. Mendoza, Artist-in-Residence
H.P. Mendoza is a Filipino-American filmmaker best known for his work as screenwriter, composer and lyricist on Colma: The Musical (2006), as well as his art-house horror film, I Am a Ghost (2014) called “H.P. Mendoza’s objet d’art” by Dennis Harvey of Variety. After his directorial debut Fruit Fly (2009), David Lamble of the San Francisco Bay Area Reporter dubbed Mendoza “San Francisco’s queer cinema poet”. In 2012, Mendoza was inducted into Essential SF by the San Francisco Film Society which supported his Filipino-American dramedy Bitter Melon (2018) which placed on over a dozen Top 10 lists after its 2018 theatrical run and was hailed as one of the “20 Best Bay Area Films of the Decade” by the Mercury News. Along with his feature films, Mendoza is also known for his music and art installations including the touring screening of his experimental visual album, Attack, Decay, Release, winner of the 2022 Grand Jury Prize at the Tallgrass Film Festival, Stubbornly Independent. At OIFF 2024, you can experience a live performance and screening of the film with Mendoza.
After world premiering at Tribeca 2023, Mendoza recently won the 2023 Best Director award at the Ouray International Film Festival for The Secret Art of Human Flight starring Academy Award nominee Paul Raci. The film also won Best Feature at the Eastern Oregon Film Festival and Best Picture at the Coronado Film Festival. The Secret Art of Human Flight opens in theaters in the summer of 2024 via XYZ Films and Level 33 Entertainment.
