Film Forum

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Lisa Hurwitz grew up in the storied Laurel Canyon neighborhood. She received a liberal arts degree from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and went on to work at arts organizations in Washington including The Olympia Film Society, where she directed The Olympia Film Festival, having started her affiliation there by volunteering as a 35 mm projectionist.  Lisa helped oversee The Arts + Ideas Stage at The Stroum Jewish Community Center of Greater Seattle and The Seattle Jewish Film Festival.  She later moved to New York City where she worked as a publicist at an Italian public relations firm.  Her first feature film THE AUTOMAT premiered at The 2021 Telluride Film Festival.  Her next project, a narrative romantic comedy film set in Italy, is currently in development.  She resides in Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Before his illustrious career as an illustrator took off, Ron Barrett started out as an art director for one of his all time favorite clients, Horn & Hardart. Best known by many as the illustrator of the classic picture book, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Ron has illustrated and authored 31 books for children and adults. His work appeared frequently in the New York Times since 1991 and in 2018 he made his debut as an illustrator for the New Yorker. He’s also been a consultant to the Children’s TV Workshop (Sesame Street) and Art Director of The National Lampoon.

Paul Hardart is a Clinical Professor of Marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business. Before joining NYU, he was the founding director of the Graduate Program in Media Management at The New School. A film industry veteran, Paul founded and ran Universal Focus, the independent film label of Universal Pictures. During his tenure there, he oversaw the release of such films as BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, PITCH BLACK, NURSE BETTY, and BILLY ELLIOT. He is a partner in the online storytelling platform Witnify, which captures and curates first-person accounts of important world events and has produced a number of critically acclaimed feature films and documentaries, including MARY AND MAX, ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: LIFE THROUGH A LENS, and BEFORE THE RAINS.