International Advisory Board

Tom Bernard

Mr. Bernard runs Sony Pictures Classics with partners Michael Barker and Marcie Bloom. An autonomous company within Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Pictures Classics was founded in 1992 to distribute, produce and acquire independent films from the United States and around the world. Mr. Bernard formerly served as an executive at Orion Classics and United Artists Classics.

David Poland

Mr. Poland is co-founder, editor-in-chief and publisher of MovieCityNews.com, a movie industry archive that features many of the leading voices in the film industry. He is the author of the widely read, daily entertainment industry column, The Hot Button, and is a former director of the Miami International Film Festival. He has attended BIFF every year since 2000.

Alison Swan

Alison Swan first caught the film bug while studying cinema at university in Paris. She returned to Bates College in Maine where she directed a documentary about a mill strike that was used by the workers to lobby for their cause. In 1995, she received an MFA in Film from New York University where she completed four shorts and was awarded the Spike Lee Fellowship. She wrote and directed the feature film, "Mixing Nia", which won top prizes at The Houston International Film Festival, The Acapulco Black Film Festival and at BIFF and was bought by HBO. She has directed television for Nickelodeon, and written screenplays for Twentieth Century Fox and Showtime.

Nick Roddick

Nick Roddick taught film and theatre at universities in the UK, Ireland and the USA before becoming a journalist in the early eighties. After a stint with Stills Magazine in London he was editor of Cinema Papers in Australia from 1985-6, followed by a decade as a trade journalist as Editor of Screen International, then Moving Pictures International. He is the author of several books and currently runs Brighton-based Split Screen. He contributes regularly to Sight & Sound and the Evening Standard; is currently building Film File Europe, a pan-European database; and consults for a number of international film festivals.