Engages, Educates, and Empowers Student Filmmakers
Film industry professionals mentor students to step out of their comfort zone and tell their stories. We unleash untapped creativity and encourage the next generation of working filmmakers to transform the culture of the industry.
Meet Our virtual
film festival Judges ...
We are so lucky to have these talented and experienced film and tv industry judges, who have generously given their time to watch and judge these films made by Orange High School students over the past year. Thank you Sara, Pete and Erin!
Sara C. Clarke
Sara is the former Senior Vice President for Showtime Network's Corporate Strategy, Analysis, and Collaboration. She led analysis and strategic recommendations that have helped Showtime Networks sustain subscriber growth and exceed its performance targets. Her team applied technology-driven solutions to increase the flow of information and ideas throughout the organization. Sara designed and executed an annual summer internship program, empowering interns to develop recommendations to promote Showtime programming, improve brand awareness, and drive growth. Sara served on the WICT NY Board for seven years, overseeing the Prime Access Executive Mentoring program, among other initiatives. She received an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University. Sara is also a graduate of WICT’s Betsy Magness Leadership Institute and attended the WICT Senior Executive Summit at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Pete Chatmon
With a deft ability to balance both half hour single camera comedies and one hour dramas, Pete Chatmon has directed episodes of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” and “Insecure”, ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy”, “Black-ish”, “A Million Little Things”, “Station 19”, “Mixed-ish” and “Single Parents”, Netflix’s “Atypical”, FX’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, FreeForm’s “Grown-ish”, TBS’s “The Last OG”, OWN’s “Greenleaf”, and the Apple TV+ series “Mythic Quest” from Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day. His debut feature as writer/director, “Premium”, starred Dorian Missick, Zoe Saldana, and Hill Harper and premiered on Showtime after a limited theatrical run. Chatmon also wrote, produced, and directed “761st”, a documentary on the first black tank battalion in WWII, narrated by Andre Braugher. He received the Tribeca Film Institute “All Access” Program’s Creative Promise Narrative Award for the heist screenplay “$FREE.99”. Through TheDirector, his Digital Studio, he has directed, shot, and edited content for advertising agencies and Fortune 500 brands. Chatmon’s career began in 2001 with the Sundance selection of his NYU thesis film, “3D”, starring Kerry Washington. His most recent short film, “BlackCard”, premiered on HBO. He is developing several episodic concepts and feature films while booking episodes for the upcoming cable, broadcast, and streaming seasons.
Erin Harper
Filmmaker and educator at Pratt Institute. Erin produced the feature film, “My Best Day” which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2012. Her first short film, “Passion” received New York state funding for development into a live improvised film about a Polish jazz violinist, which toured jazz and film festivals internationally. She worked as Barbara Hammer’s first digital cinematographer on her award-winning short, “Maya Deren’s Sink” (awarded a Teddy for Best Short Film at Berlin International Film Festival) and as a camerawoman on her latest project, “This House, A Film about Elizabeth Bishop.” She recently completed VERAL, a short film based on award-wining novelist Greg Hill’s short story, “Now Museum, Now You Don’t.” Her feature adaptation of his debut novel and the first of his Strattford Trilogy series, EAST OF DENVER, is in development. Another recent project of Erin's was directing and editing the full-length documentary, MY WILD HEART which is now screening at film festivals.