Board of Directors & Membership

Board of Directors

Hilary Beisheim has a great affection for character actors, such as Chris Cooper in her favorite indie Lone Star. She is a cinematography nerd and loves film noir, musicals, and Spanish cinema; her favorite contemporary directors include Pedro Almodóvar, The Coen Brothers, and Paul Thomas Anderson. She learned about Chlotrudis while taking film classes on Alfred Hitchcock. After crying to near-dehydration during both Into the Wild and Beasts of the Southern Wild, she is understandably wary of films with “wild” in the title. Hilary serves on the Chlotrudis Society’s Board of Directors and the Web Editorial Board.

 

 

Nancy Campbell has been dedicated to the exhibition of foreign and independent films in the Boston area for over two decades. In addition to serving on the Board of Directors for Chlotrudis, she is the Program Director for the Independent Film Festival of Boston (IFFBoston) and manages the Coolidge Corner Theatre. In her spare time, she attempts to set photography back a hundred years, plays ukulele poorly, collects elongated pennies.

 

Michael Colford is cinematically drawn to our neighbors to the north in Canada, especially the work of filmmakers Atom Egoyan, Don McKellar, Molly Parker, Sarah Polley, Wiebke von Carolsfeld to name a few. He was a founding Board member for the Brattle Film Foundation, and more recently on the Board of the Provincetown Film Society, to which he has just returned after a brief hiatus. A nascent theater director, Michael serves as Vice President on the Board of Directors of the Footlight Club, America’s oldest, continuously operating community theater. hen he’s finished with all of that, he spends some time at the Boston Public Library as the Director of Library Services. Michael serves as President of Chlotrudis Society’s Board of Directors. He is one of the Founders of Chlotrudis Awards.

 

Gil Cordova first became involved in film while living in Austin where he volunteered with SXSW, the Austin Film Festival and Cine Las Americas.  Once moving to Boston, he spent five years as a program manager with the Boston Latino International Film Festival and currently serves on the Chlotrudis Board of Directors.

 

 

 

Beth Curran lives in Jamaica Plain, MA and works in Boston’s financial district, wearing the obligatory suit. Consequently, she puts serious effort into her hobbies, which besides film also include writing, rooting for BC’s women’s basketball team (go Eagles!), and angsting over home improvement projects. A second-generation film buff, Beth counts Orfeo Negro, On the Waterfront, Singin’ in the Rain and Intolerance as movies that rocked her world when she first saw them. Presently her taste runs towards documentaries, all things Canadian, and almost anything with Mary Louise Parker or Maggie Gyllenhaal. Beth serves on the Chlotrudis Board of Directors and handles Chltorudis PR duties.

 

Shannon Daut leads the Cultural Affairs Division for the City of Santa Monica, where she works to integrate the arts into all aspects of life in the community. In that role she recently conceptualized and led the implementation of two significant projects: Belmar History + Art, a Civic Commemoration Project, and Art of Recovery, which supports artistic efforts that address recovery needs in the areas of economic recovery, community connectedness & restorative justice, and public health & safety. She was previously the Executive Director of the Alaska State Council on the Arts. While there, she re-imagined and re-invigorated the leadership role of the agency in state policy, from tourism and economic development to education and Alaska Native cultural advancement. Daut has served on the boards of the National Performance Network/Visual Arts Network, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and WESTAF. Daut received her bachelor’s degree in Communication Arts/Film from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her graduate degree in Communication/Rhetoric from the University of Colorado-Denver. Shannon serves on the Chlotrudis Board of Directors, and as a member of the Website Committee.

Laks Indrakaran was born to a fourth generation Sri Lankan immigrant family and raised in a small town outside of Kuala Lumpur where he grew up watching Hollywood and Bollywood before discovering treasure troves of indie films from all over the world including neighbouring countries from East and South East Asia, sold in little shops on street markets as a roving teenager. He then went to study Music and Chinese Literature at SOAS London where he spent the next nine years of his adult life earning a living waiting tables eventually entering higher ed to work at RADA. Laks has since immigrated to Boston Massachusetts and works at Africana Studies located at the Boston Conservatory serving both Berklee and the Conservatory. He has an affinity for the strange and unusual in cinema, music and literature.

 

Chris Kriofske, grew up in Milwaukee, but has now lived in Boston longer than he did in his hometown. Having earned degrees in Film Studies and Journalism, he spent many years working for the Coolidge Corner Theatre. He has also volunteered for the Brattle Theatre and IFFBoston. Chris serves as the Treasurer of Chlotrudis Society’s Board of Directors, as well as the Nomination Rules Committee, and on the Web Editorial Board. He blogs at hauntedjukebox.com and still tries to watch as many movies as he can handle (i.e., a lot.)

 

 

Vicki Oleskey, a native New Yorker, became interested in film early on. After graduating from NYU, she began her movie career in Morocco as a PA (hired because she spoke French) on a film which may not have seen much light of day in the USA (Our Man in Marrakesh). When that gig ended, Vicki read and evaluated scripts for a producer and worked as an apprentice film editor. She planned to go to Spain for a year to learn more about making films from Sidney Pink, but romance and relocation redirected her career path. While working on a film about Upward Bound she was inspired to apply to the NYU Graduate School of Education. She completed her MA, got married, moved to Boston and became an elementary school teacher. She has always been an avid film goer and now loves to attend film festivals. Vicki screens documentaries for the Woods Hole Film  Festival and the  Boston Film Festival. She has also tried her hand at producing and served as an Associate Producer on Cheryl Eagan-Donovan’s Nothing is Truer Than Truth. Her favorite films include A Thousand Clowns, Love, Actually (Bill Nighy fan), Fargo and The Motorcycle Diaries. Vicki has been on the Chlotrudis Board of Directors for over 10 years.

 

Jeffrey Pike is a retired Technology Services Librarian living in the Pacific Northwest. Movies have been a source of great wonder to him since his Dad took him to see BIG RED on his sixth birthday. He spends his spare time with his kids, cooking dinner, or scratching one of the cats’ tummies. He recently discovered lounge music. His favorite beverage is tea. Jeff is a long-time member, but our newest Board member.

 

 

Diane Young is an amateur filmgoer, and former librarian and churchworker, living in Ipswich, MA. Led by her sister Janet, she inaugurated the musical numbers for the Chlotrudis awards ceremonies in the early ’90s. Diane agrees with Anthony Lane that movies should be seen in the theater: “one thing that has nourished the theatrical experience…is the element of compulsion. Someone else decides when the show will start; we may decide whether to attend, but, once we take our seats, we join the ride and surrender our will.” As a founding director serving on the Board, Diane returns nearly twenty years later and we are very happy to have her back.

 

Chlotrudis Membership

Peg Aloi is a longtime freelance film critic who wrote for the Boston Phoenix for over a decade. Her work has appeared with a diverse array of outlets including Time, Vice, Refinery29, Polygon, the Orlando Weekly, SheKnows, Bloody Disgusting, Film and Fishnets, Insider, Film School Rejects, InStyle, and Radio Times. She has been a film critic for The Arts Fuse, a Boston-based arts criticism website, since its early days and also writes a television column for them called “Watch Closely.” She loves cinema that is visually complex and compelling, the creative use of color, melancholy scores, passionate performances, and stories that aren’t always clear-cut. She’s a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. Her favorite film is Picnic at Hanging Rock.

 

Julie Blumenthal grew up as somewhat of a movie latch key kid, when as a young girl, her Mother taught her how to take the bus to the movie theater in downtown Philadelphia. Her first memories are of Beckett and Mary Poppins. Much later in life (8th grade), her mother took her to see the controversial film The Boys in the Band. She loved it! She then ventured on to more independent film at nearby colleges and any art house theater she could find. She first discovered Chlotrudis at the 8th Annual awards, where Hal Hartley and Arsinee Khanjian were honored and in attendance. She’s been hooked ever since! When not watching movies, she likes to hang out with her two cats while working on her PhD in Computer Science. She hopes to work in the area of computer vision and/or origami polygon cutting, skeleton and folding theory one day. She also likes to swim about 150 miles a year at Walden Pond, collects way too many pieces of art and antiques and is looking for, but still can’t find, the time for her violin and fender tele. Her favorite films include Central Station, Toto le Héros, 3 Iron, Brick, The Edge of Heaven, Bill Cunningham New York, A Somewhat Gentle Man and Septien.

 

Thom Bowser is a retired gentleman who has been a film fanatic for nearly 70 years. He has been writing film reviews for 60 years and now watch more films than ever. He loves the fact that they make him a part of every world imaginable in all possible situations and environments sometimes even in true stories or animation. One of the most enjoyable aspects of his viewing repertoire is watching any film that is reviewed by someone with a 4 CATS rating or higher. That brings me more attune with other tastes. He also has a list of 306 past & present actors that he tries to see every film they have been in (admittedly an impossible task). He also has obsessions with music, reading, and thoroughbred horse racing so his life is always full of delightful possibilities.

 

Tony Brighton is a lawyer in Upstate New York.  He has exceptional taste.  He is interested in the definition of “exceptional.”  He likes movies (or films) that are about real life adventures, but not explicitly so.  Sometimes he likes musical scores.  His hobbies are fear and complaining about his neighbor’s power tools.

 

Beth Caldwell has been a Chlotrudis member for nearly a decade. Beth first became interested in independent film when she lived in Iowa City, attending the University of Iowa, a college town with a rich arts community and home of the Bijou Theater and FilmScene. She later obtained her PhD in Biopsychology at Kent State University. The week she sent her dissertation to her committee, she saw 14 films at the Cleveland Film Festival. She then became hooked on Indy Film Festivals, attending and volunteering at the Independent Film Festival of Boston and the Provincetown International Film Festival. A strong advocate of increasing exposure to short films, she helped organize short film festivals with the Chlotrudis Society at various Boston venues.In 2011 she moved to Ithaca NY, where she is working to build the Ithaca Chapter of Chlotrudis Society.  Beth is a past member of the Chlotrudis Board of Directors.

 

Amanda Doran grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut and later resided in Philadelphia and Austin before calling Boston home. In whichever city she lived, she always frequented the local arthouse theater (Cinema City in Hartford, the Ritz in Philly, the Alamo and Dobie in Austin, and now the Brattle, Kendall, and Coolidge here in Boston) to keep up with the latest independent and international films. In her spare time, she also volunteers with the Boston Latino International Film Festival. Her all-time favorite films include Cinema Paradiso, Amelie, and Before Sunset.

 

Cheryl Eagan-Donovan (M.F.A.) is a writer, director, and producer whose documentary Nothing Is Truer than Truth premiered at IFFBoston in 2018, is available on Amazon Prime in the U.S. and Canada, and is being released in the U.K., Europe and the rest of world under the new title Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Name. Her debut documentary All Kindsa Girls screened at film festivals and art house theaters in London, Toronto and throughout the U.S.  She teaches writing, film, and literature at Lesley University, and has also taught at Northeastern University, Lasell University, and Grub Street Center for Creative Writing. A former president of Women in Film & Video New England, she has published articles about screenwriting and film, appeared on several podcast series, and serves as a manuscript consultant for screenwriters and producers. She is currently working on a book for screenwriters, Shakespeare Auteur: Creating Authentic Characters for the Screen, and a book about Shakespeare’s bisexuality and The Sonnets. She served as a screenwriting mentor at SXSW and is looking forward to attending the festival in Austin again in March 2022. A few of her favorite films include The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, La Dolce Vita, Les Quatre Cents Coups, A Bout de Souffle, Throne of Blood, and everything by Pedro Almodovar.

Ned Hinkle is co-director Brattle Film Foundation. Ned has been a film lover since childhood when he was unaccountably scarred by a trailer for Picnic at Hanging Rock seen at the Off The Wall Cinema and walked out of Taxi Driver at the Harvard Square Theatre because he “knew it was going to end badly.”

 

 

Marilyn at the Movies is retired judge from Upstate New York who is embarking on a new career as a filmmaker. She is the mother of four and grandmother of ten (soon to be eleven!) Marilyn sees 2-3 movies a week and just began a Monday Night Movie Club open to anyone who wants to share a movie a week with others who love going to the movies. She enjoys theater almost as much as film. Thank heavens her children do too.

 

Mary McIntire Sister to founder Michael Colford and mother to fellow committee-member, Tim McIntire, Mary put in a great effort to see the required number of movies when she served on the Nominating Commitee, and enjoyed doing so!  Her favorite actor is Tom Hiddleston. Admirers of the famous cat-on-a-stick Chlotrudis Award have Mary to thank, as she handcrafts all of them! Mary is a former member of the Chlotrudis Board or Directors.

 

 

Tim McIntire is the son of Chlotrudis Awards’ Board of Directors member Mary McIntire, and nephew of Chlotrudis Awards’ President Michael Colford. A recent graduate of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he studied chemistry, he is currently working at Newbury Comics, before going back to school. His recent favorites include The Five Senses, All About My Mother and Magnolia. He is also a huge fan of Phish, Tool, Dar Williams, and the Cure.

 

 

Tom Meek is a writer living in Cambridge. His reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, Cambridge Day, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and teaches writing and journalism at Grub Street.

 

 

Ivy Moylan is co-director of the Brattle Theatre and the Brattle Film Foundation. Although making a late introduction to the wonder of film, she is catching up for lost time as best she can. So many movies, so little time! She has a special weakness for the neo-femme fatale genre and film as subversion. You won’t see her at the movies on Tuesdays because she’ll be watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Ivy served for years as the Clerk of Chlotrudis Society’s Board of Directors and we thank her for her service.

 

Toni Pennacchia, is based between Boston and NYC and has over twenty years of experience in music and film, both as a producer and director for music genres including: folk, world/global, electronic, and in promoting and producing independent and international film and music. Along with filmmaker conversations on the long-running Spoiler Alert Radio show, she produces Transworld Airwaves, syndicated via Pacifica Radio and live in Boston on WZBC-FM. She also produces Donne del Mondo, Global Music by Women, for Pacifica Radio affiliates. Toni is on WRIU-FM regionally on the World Wide Waves program and has contributed nationally for Pacifica’s Sprouts, on projects related to film, music, and grassroots radio. She has produced the Short Short Story Film Festival and Womanimation! global film festivals, and attributes her love of film and music to her first job as a teen working in the library’s audio-visual department.  Find her at Merging Arts Productions.

 

Kate Pike lives in Groton, MA and does very little, other than working-from-home as a senior member of the forums moderation and support team at TripAdvisor.com, and watching movies. Earliest film-related memory is watching The Wizard of Oz on TV at age 4 (1960). Admits to being a minor drama-queen in high school with aspirations to be a Big Star, but her film credits to date are as Make-up Artist for a short film produced by Michael Belanger, and her role as a harried single mom in a student film directed by Andrew Blanchette. Film favorites include The Trip, Serenity, The Proposition, 28 Days Later…, The Station Agent, Donnie Darko, Terribly Happy, The Artist … but with more than 10,000 movies watched over a lifetime, her “Favorite Film List” is incredibly long, and the “Top Tens” are in a constant state of flux. Her only other claim to fame is as mother to erstwhile Miss Chlotrudis, Emily Pike.

 

Garrett Quinn grew up on the South Shore of MA where he developed a love for moviegoing when his father took him and his brother regularly to the now demolished Flagship Cinemas on Hancock Street in Quincy. As a teenager he went to a screening of Casablanca at the Brattle Theater and he’s been in love with the place ever since. After a decade in journalism and public relations, he is now in his final year of law school and does not like how studying takes up time he would rather spend at the movies or on Phish tour. He thinks Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy is the greatest trilogy ever made. His favorite films include: Frances Ha, Heat, Streets of Fire, Palm Springs, The Clock, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, GoodFellas, Blade Runner & Blade Runner 2049, and A Matter Of Life and Death. Follow him on Letterboxd and Twitter.

 

Brett Reliford is a high school teacher and academic team/quiz bowl coach from Columbia, KY. Part of the appeal of cinema for Brett is the excitement behind discovering a movie when it is brand new and has very little word-of-mouth to support it upon its initial release. He is a strong proponent of the philosophy of “no movie trailers!” for any films he might be interested in seeing. He is also fascinated and always fulfilled by film festival experiences and chases as many of those unique experiences as possible. The impossible task of narrowing down a shortlist of all-time favorite films would likely find works like The Crowd (1928), Dr Strangelove, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon among a long list of others. When narrowing down a few of his more recent favorites, those films include A Ghost Story, Roma, Suspiria (2018), The Vast of Night, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Brett Serves on the Society’s Website Committee.

 

Jana Seitzer is editor-in-chief/founder of Whisky + Sunshine, comic nerd, and oenophile who splits her time between NY and VT when she’s not theme park hopping or visiting filming locations across the globe. Jana’s interest in cinema started with the first film she watched on VHS–Halloween (1978). Her family got their first VHS player in 1982 and her dad wanted to watch his Uncle John’s Halloween and The Fog “in the name of art” despite her mother’s suggestion they weren’t age-appropriate (she was 6 years old). The result was film interests as eclectic as her taste in music, ranging from undiscovered indie film festival gems to blockbuster superhero films (by the only studio that knows how to weave a story and make a comic panel come to life on the big screen). If you had to ask her to name her top films of all time, that list would be just as diverse and include films such as The Way We Were, All the President’s Men, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Halloween (1978), and Me, Myself, and Irene (because it’s fun to see yourself as an extra, not because it’s a quality movie). A few recent favorites, for varied reasons, including Soul (soundtrack), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (animation), Judas and the Black Messiah, The Unforgivable, and tick…tick…BOOM!. Jana’s hobbies include wondering whether or not the moderator will pronounce either her first or last name correctly in the next press junket and rescuing dogs against her better judgment.

Allison Sloan keeps busy writing novels, and since retiring from the Reading Public Library (after 30 years), she serves as an elected member of the Middleton Flint Library Board of Trustees. She is a dedicated fan of sci fi and Star Trek, and her favorite independent film is The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She supports the Chlotrudis Society’s dream as an ex-officio member of the Board, and when called upon helps with administrative/publicity/event coordination.

 

Tom Smarr is a professional horticulturist who has worked mostly in public parks and botanical gardens in Boston and across the U.S. I have a deep appreciation for all art forms, including movies. I often say that gardening is a fourth dimensional art form that includes time as plants grow and age. Movies are similar in that they are often made to tell/react to stories about current times, but many of the great ones continue to have new interpretations and impact many years afterwards. I tend to love comedies, suspense thrillers/adventures, and documentaries about people with courageous lives.

 

Carolyn Ziering is originally from outside of Boston. She grew up in a cave largely devoid of independent film, but decided to join Chlotrudis after the delightful 10th Annual Awards Ceremony. Carolyn is yet another Chlotrudis member/librarian and is embarrassed to admit her movie tastes tend toward romance and drama, but ones with twists and obstacles. She also enjoys most documentaries!

 

 

 

updated 1/23/2024