SHORT FILM GRAND PRIX JURY

Michael Rabiger (USA)

Michael Rabiger got his start as an assistant editor in the British film industry in 1956 at the age of 17. He shifted to television documentary in 1962 directing and editing more than thirty five films. Rabiger joined the film faculty at Columbia College Chicago (CCC) in 1972 and founded the Documentary Center at Columbia College in 1988. During 1994-95 he was the distinguished visiting professor at New York University's Department of Film and Television and in 1996 he returned to Chicago and became Chair of Columbia College’s Film/Video Department. In 2001, Rabiger retired from teaching to write full-time and in that same year, the CCC’s Film/Video Department's documentary center was renamed "The Michael Rabiger Center for Documentary." He is esteemed educator and acclaimed author of the “documentary bibles”: Directing Documentary and Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics. In 2005, Michael Rabiger was honored with the CIDF Genius Career Award.

Elizabeth Coffman (USA)

Elizabeth Coffman is a documentary filmmaker, film studies scholar and Director of the Center for Global Media and Documentary Studies at Loyola University Chicago. Her last feature-length documentary, completed with partner Ted Hardin, was One More Mile: A Dialogue on Nation-Building (2003), which was broadcast in Eastern Europe and screened at festivals around the globe. She and Hardin have also shown video installations at galleries and museums. Currently, she and Hardin are spending a lot of time on the bayous of Louisiana completing Veins in the Gulf--a documentary on poetry, science and the disappearance of the wetlands.

Slawomir Grunberg (USA)

Slawomir Grunberg, born in Lublin, Poland is a graduate of the Polish Film School in Lodz, where he studied cinematography and directing. Between 1974-76 he worked as a cinematographer for the Polish Television Network in Warsaw. He emigrated from Poland to the US in 1981, and has since shot and produced over 35 television documentaries. Slawomir has been a contributing director of photography and editor for the PBS’ series: Frontline, American Masters, NOVA, AIDS Quarterly and Health Quarterly. In 2000 he won the Emmy Award for a documentary he photographed, directed and co-produced: School Prayer: A Community at War. As a principal director of photography, he has shot over 50 documentaries, four of which received Emmy nominations. Slawomir was named a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Documentary Filmmaking in 1997, in 2002 he received a New York Artist's Fellowship, and in 2003 the Soros Justice Media Fellowship.