Mission
The mission of the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival is to bring strong, independent documentary films and their filmmakers to West Sonoma County.
Festival Presenter
The Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival is presented by Sebastopol Center for the Arts.
Sebastopol Center for the Arts is a grassroots, nonprofit arts center created in 1988 by a coalition of art, business and community members to provide art programs and services for all sectors of the community. For more information about SCA Click Here.
Film Festival Staff
Linda Galletta, Executive Director
Jason Perdue, Program Director
Tommie Dell Smith, Co-Artistic Director
Teresa Book Webster, Co-Artistic Director
Kathy Douglas, Festival Coordinator
Cynthi Stefenoni, Volunteer Coordinator
Film Festival Founder
ELIZA HEMENWAY founded the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival in 2007 with a vision to showcase strong, independent documentary films in West Sonoma County, and to network the local film community.
Festival Steering Committee
JASON PERDUE, Program Director, has been a member of the San Francisco Film Society for 20 years and has traveled to film festivals around the country, seeing first-hand how successful festivals are run. He served on the selection committee of the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival in 2007, and has taken on the role of program director for SDFF 2009. He brings a true film fan's perspective to programming this year’s festival.
TERESA BOOK WEBSTER is Co-Artistic Director of SDFF 2011, and has been involved with the festival since its inception in 2007. Her credits as a post-production supervisor and assistant film editor include numerous narrative and documentary features edited in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
TOMMIE DELL SMITH is Co-Artistic Director of SDFF 2011, and has produced and directed award-winning documentaries for over 25 years. As a member of New Day Films, a national film distribution cooperative, she has participated in selecting new documentaries for the collection for 14 years. Tommie has served as panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and several state arts councils and as a juror for other film festivals around the country.
GIL MANSERGH is the festival’s resident film critic, serving as movie columnist in the Sonoma West Times and News, Petaluma Argus Courier, Windsor Times and Healdsburg Tribune. He is the radio host of Cinema Toast on KRSH-FM and Word by Word: Conversations with Writers on KRCB-FM. Gil is also author of the Cinema Toast movie blog on the Press Democrat/New York Times website, Petaluma360.com. A psychological educator and internationally acknowledged expert on using film clips as teaching tools, Gil brings a decidedly different point-of-view to the festival’s selection committee.
JEAN MCGLOTHLIN was part of the independent film community in San Francisco, producing and distributing films primarily for business and education. Her small company produced a feature film and distributed independent films to college campuses. She also produced a video that was bought by McGraw-Hill for distribution. Jean has pre-screened shorts for the San Francisco Film Festival, and although now a metalsmith, she remains a rabid film fan.
CYNTHI STEFENONI is Volunteer Coordinator for SDFF, and a life-long resident of Sebastopol. She has been a member of the Directors Guild of America since 1988. Her Assistant Director credits range from features to episodic television, children's programming, movies for television and mini-series. She has been a Consulting Producer for various independent films and brought her skills to various projects at the American Film Institute, Cal State Long Beach and the San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking. Cynthi is currently Supervising Producer for the documentary Face2Face which is being shot in the summer of 2011.