DATE: 4/15/25
TIME: 7:30pm - 9:30pm
LOCATION: Manuel’s Tavern
PRICE: Free
The 49th Atlanta Film Festival is fast approaching! This month at Eat, Drink & B-Indie, join us for a preview of official selections from the 2025 Atlanta Film Festival lineup. We'll introduce you to a selection of #ATLFF25 filmmakers, hear about their projects, and give you a special sneak peek of the Festival! Participating filmmakers will be announced soon.
Moderators
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Jonathan Kieran is a film programmer hailing from Essex County, Massachusetts. After making a start as an amateur filmmaker at the tender age of 22, he moved across the country to take a spot at the Master of Fine Arts program in Film Production at the University of New Orleans. At the same time, he started as a volunteer for the New Orleans Film Festival, which slowly grew to become his professional home over the next decade and where he wore many hats, from organizing panels, to assisting the festival’s technical department, to finally settling into the role of Programming Manager. Jon also lent a hand at other regional festivals including Court 13’s Always for Pleasure fest in New Orleans, Borscht Corporation’s “Borscht Diez” in Miami, and the Camden International Film Festival. He was also a longtime contributor to online indie-film showcase NoBudge.
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Her name is Astin and she rocks! Described as a Multimedia Artist, Astin specializes in Writing, Filmmaking, Musicianship, and Event Production.
Thirteen years into the film industry, Astin ROCKS has written and produced comedy series, visual albums, experimental narrative films, and short promos for local businesses. Season 2 of her latest work, satiric counterfeit-crime comedy, Real Fakes, was released in September 2023.
When not vocalizing her deadpan societal concerns on camera, she screams them aloud on stage as one half of punk & soul duo Thee BLK Pearl. Ten years into her career as a vocalist - and one year as a bassist - Astin and her dear friend Fred Robinson. founded Thee BLK Pearl in 2021 Their second EP Cult Classic, will release Fall 2024.
Landing the coolest 9-5 ever, Astin currently serves as the Narrative Shorts Programmer at the Atlanta Film Festival. “The only thing more fun than creating my own work is celebrating creators I believe in.” Astin is currently based in her hometown, Atlanta, GA.
Panelists
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Adesola Thomas is an Atlanta-raised, queer Nigerian-American writer-director and 1st AD. She makes films about Southern subcultures and the Black diaspora to examine care and interdependence as essential practices for a livable world.
Adesola's work has screened at Diversity at Cannes in France, Deeper Than Movies in London, Millennium Film and No Budge in Brooklyn, Artists Forum, Cinema Soutterain, and Southern Fried Queer Pride's Cinequeer in Atlanta. She is a 2024: 2x Sundance Press Inclusion Fellow, Georgia Film Impact Grantee, Bleecker Street BIPOC Mentorship Fellow, and Resisting Narratives of Erasure Directing Fellow at the Visionary Justice Lab in Atlanta where she recently completed her dramatic magical realist short, Sister Salad Days.
Adesola is an East Coast Reporter for Letterboxd (LB) and Producer's Assistant at Kashif Incubator. Her forthcoming punk rave film, Marigold Leaves Her Body won the Best Narrative Short Script Award at Atlanta's 2024 Out on Film Festival and was a finalist for the South Pitch Narrative competition at the 2024 New Orleans Film Festival. -
Caroline Rumley is an American filmmaker from the South who collages solo-shot film, found and archival footage, text, and sound to illuminate a public or personal experience. Her essayistic non-fiction films have screened internationally at varied venues - from Melbourne's Biennial of Video Art to Amsterdam’s IDFA to Berlin's Zebra Poetry Film Festival to Sundance. Caroline holds an MFA in Theatrical Design from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MA in Film, Video, and Digital Imaging from Georgia State University.
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Blanche Enaka is a Cameroonian-American writer, director, composer, and musician from Atlanta, GA. She is most passionate about Southern comedic storytelling, centering folks across the LGBTQ+ community and the African diaspora. Her films explore spirituality, childhood, justice, and afro-surreal worlds through a queer feminist lens. Blanche graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film Program, and she studied Music Business at New York University Steinhardt’s Undergraduate Program.
In 2019, Blanche wrote, directed, produced, edited, scored and starred in her third short film, Mercury Afrograde. She was awarded NewFest’s Emerging Black LGBTQ+ Director Award in 2020, and received an Honorable Mention for Best Student Short at the Woodstock Film Festival. Blanche’s work has screened at Outfest, Blackstar Film Festival, NewFest, Woodstock Film Festival, Afrikana Film Festival, and Inside Out Festival among others.
Blanche participated in Gotham’s 2021 TV-Series Lab, and their Project Market, with her series, Mercury Afrograde. Her self-directed music video, Chasing Amour, was featured in Forbes. Blanche starred in Pepi Ginsberg’s film, The Pass, which was an Official Selection at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. She was a recipient of NewFest and Netflix’s New Voices Filmmaker Grant. Blanche was selected as a composer for New Music USA’s Reel Change Grant Program in 2024.
REMINDER: Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Attendees must be seated, and the event will reach capacity. Arrive early to network before the panel discussion begins at 7:30 PM. Networking may resume after the panel discussion until midnight.