One of the newest things about this year’s festival is our introduction of a juried prize. In the past, we’ve given out audience choice awards as well as our programmer’s pick. We will still be doing that this year, but we are also happy to announce our special Jury Awards, awarded to best screenplay, cinematography, lead actor, supporting actor, actress, supporting actress, best short, and best feature film. The winner of the best feature film will win $1,000. You’ll see in the program the films that have been nominated in each category, and during the festival, we will announce who the jury have selected as winners!

We are thrilled to introduce our four fantastic jurors:

Adam Schartoff (will be in attendance!)
Adam Schartoff founded Filmwax, a Brooklyn-based film series that shows independent films throughout locations in NYC. Filmwax Radio, hosted by Adam, consists of “Filmwax Interviews with sundry folks from the indie film scene in Brooklyn, NY and beyond. With Filmwax Radio, each 30-minute episode includes an interview with a personality from the indie film scene.”

Adam also contributes to blogs tribecafilm.com, pov.org, hammertonail.com and his own blogwax (blog.filmwax.com). As his bio on Filmwax Radio says, “Most importantly, Adam is Dad to Jacob.”

Jasmine Chazelle
In 2011, Jasmine wrote and directed her first feature film, Maria My Love, which screened at HHM 2011 as our opening night film. Maria My Love stars Independent Spirit Award nominee Judy Marte (Raising Victor Vargas) and Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee Karen Black (Five Easy Pieces).

• Premiered in competition for the New Narrative Director Award, Tribeca Film Festival
• Won Best U.S. Feature at HBO’s New York International Latino Film Festival
• “real and surprising…an auspicious narrative debut.” – Film Comment’s Amy Taubin, Indiewire
• “Maria My Love promises a filmmaker with a steady and deep appreciation of character.” – The Denver Post
• “Jasmine McGlade Chazelle has a very bright Hollywood future ahead of her.” – MTV’s Michael Lopez wrote:

After growing up in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and England, Jasmine went to Harvard University (graduated in 2007) where she produced the feature-length musical Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, which premiered at Tribeca in 2009, won the Special Jury Prize at the Torino Film Festival, was nominated for a Gotham Award, and was released in theaters the next year. The Village Voice, Film Comment, Time Out New York, and The Boston Phoneix named it one of the ten best films of the year and one of the best thirty by The New York Times and The Boston Globe.

Recently, Jasmine was selected as an Artist-in-Residence at the inaugural Napa Valley Film Festival. She also was invited to participate in Film Independent’s Directors Lab with The Fencer, a film she wrote and will direct, inspired by Jasmine’s personal experiences as a national champion fencer. She is currently working on a feature film called Storm Cloud Blue and currently lives in Venice, California with her husband Damien Chazelle.

Damien Chazelle
Married to Jasmine, Damien Chazelle wrote and directed his first feature, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, at Harvard University, the film which Jasmine produced while also attending school there. Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench premiered at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, was released in theaters in 2010, and was named one of the best films of the year by many publications.

Chazelle appeared in the 2010 Black List for his screenplay The Claim and in 2012 with his script Whiplash. His short film, also titled Whiplash, won the Short Film Jury Prize for U.S. Fiction at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. He also wrote the screenplay for The Last Exorcism Part II Currently, he is developing the feature-length version of Whiplash with producers Jason Reitman and Jason Blum.

Adam Busch
Adam Busch is known best, perhaps, for his role in the ’90s hit show Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Warren Meers, part of “The Trio” in Season 6, and for his role for the new show Men at Work as Neal, one of the four feature characters. Film festival goers may recognize him from one of the lead roles in the short film The Dungeon Master, which screened in 2011 at HHM and was written and directed by brothers Rider Strong and Shiloh Strong.

Adam also sings in a folk rock band called Common Rotation. The members include Eric Kufs (singer/guitarist), Adam (harmonica, vocals) and Jordan Katz (trumpet, banjo, bass). The band plays all around Los Angeles, New York, and the UK. The band’s latest album Keep an Open Gallery was released Fall 2011.