Judges

Judging art is hard.  Everyone has different tastes.  We take judging very seriously at Z-Fest and have spent countless hours and a lot of money on a unique custom web application that makes the films easily accessible to the judges.  Huge thanks go to Matt Peterson – the web genius that has designed, redesigned, and continued to make this app nothing short of magic!  And to Adam Colt who came up with and continues to drive the functional design.

This app allows us to solicit and have a very diverse range of judges by age, gender, ethnicity, geography, and experience in the film industry.  The goal of the app is to gain as much of a consensus as possible.  The Z-Fest staff is not directly involved in the final judging, but we do spend a lot of time poring over the results and ensuring that there weren’t any clerical or computational errors.

Judging starts with a pre-screening process.  A panel narrows the selection of films that go to the final round of judging.  This typically cuts the field of films by about half.

If you are interested in being a judge for Z-Fest, please send us an email. We’d love to have your help!

Here is the preliminary list of the judges for this year:


Roxanne Williams
Kurt Paulsen
Kelly Sarri
Bobby Marsden
Ira Livingston
Cynthia Hotvedt
Michael Guncheon
Karen Frank
Sandra Capra
Jaclynne Wolff
Oscar Oboza
Dan Anderson
Brianna Deihl