John Richardson (Executive Director) is a Co-Founder of the Rochester/ High Falls International Film Festival. He served as Board Chair for most of the Festival’s history prior to becoming Executive Director. In a previous life, he was the Director of New York Public Affairs for Eastman Kodak Company. His responsibilities included lobbying and public relations initiatives with the state and local governments, and community-interest groups in the greater Rochester area. John was the company liaison for economic development initiatives, environmental issues, charitable contributions, workforce training, real estate, tax negotiations, and the arts. In prior positions, John was Controller of Kodak’s Lincoln Plant, Manager of Operations for the Federal Systems Division, and Director of the Federal Government Marketing organization where he managed a $250M business selling commercial products to the Federal government. John was also the Marketing Manager for the first digital camera and digital printer. John is active in the Rochester community and currently serves on the Boards of WXXI Public Broadcasting Council, Pathstone Advisory Panel, and volunteers for Junior Achievement.
Linda Moroney (Managing Director) has been active in the independent film community for over 10 years. Films she’s produced have shown theatrically, been broadcast nationally, and screened at numerous film festivals worldwide. Prior to becoming our Managing Director, Linda served at the Technical Director and Shorts Co-Programmer for the festival. In 2007, she was the Curator for Animated Jazz Shorts from The Hubley Studio, which was a Co-presentation by the Rochester International Jazz Festival, Rochester/High Falls International Film Festival, and George Eastman House. Linda cut her filmmaking teeth working with Academy Award winner, Faith Hubley, on six of her animated films. In addition, Linda was the Associate Producer on the independent feature-length documentary, RAM DASS FIERCE GRACE named by Newsweek magazine as one of the five best non-fiction films of 2002, and broadcast nationally on PBS in 2004. She has also produced several other short films including SET SET SPIKE (2001), which was an official selection in the 2002 Sundance Festival. Linda is a founding member of Women in Film & Television Rochester. She is currently working on THE STORYBOOK PROJECT, her first documentary feature film as director.
Jim Healy (Director of Programming) has been the Assistant Curator in the Motion Picture Department of George Eastman House in Rochester, NY since 2001. He oversees 340 individual programs annually, in historic Dryden Theatre, a 535 seat venue. His programming has raised average annual attendance 15%, reaching record high in 2008. He introduces several films per month and conducts postfilm discussions/Q&As with guests as varied as Paul Thomas Anderson, Kathryn Bigelow, Andrew Bujalski, Steve Buscemi, Willem Defoe, Ben Gazzara, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tamara Jenkins, James Earl Jones, Albert Maysles, Alexander Payne, Isbella Rossellini, Jessica Lange, and Eli Wallach. In addition, he provides instruction to students in Eastman House’s L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation.
A former programmer for the Chicago International Film Festival, he is currently a programming consultant for the widely respected Torino and Moscow Film Festivals. Furthermore, he supervises, writes and edits a bi-monthly publication with descriptions of each film on the Dryden Calendar, as well as overseeing updates of Dryden’s website and marketing of programs. Other publications include serving as Co-Editor and a contributing writer to John Cassavetes, a book of essays and interviews published in conjunction with the Torino festival’s retrospective salute to Cassavetes in 2007. In November 2009, an essay of his will be included in Nicholas Ray, which will be published in conjunction with the Ray retrospective at the Torino Film Festival.
Jack Garner (Artistic Consultant) was chief film critic for the Gannett newspapers and staff film critic at the (Rochester, NY) Democrat and Chronicle for 30 years before he retired in June 2007.
Though retired, he continues to write for the newspaper as a freelancer, doing a weekly film and entertainment column, as well as DVD and jazz CD reviews.
He began reviewing films at the Democrat & Chronicle in 1977 — starting with the original Star Wars. In 1987, Garner was appointed chief film critic of Gannett News Service, and his writing regularly appears in Gannett newspapers nationwide, and in journals worldwide.
He holds a B.A. degree in journalism from St. Bonaventure and an M.S. from Syracuse University.
He joined the Rochester Times-Union in 1970, as a rewrite man on the city desk, where he was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Attica prison rebellion.
Jack also serves on the boards of BOA Editions, poetry publishers, and Writers & Books, Rochester’s prominent literary organization. In November 2007, Jack was honored at the George Eastman House as only the second recipient of the museum’s prestigious George Eastman Medal of Honor, and was feted with a community roast, hosted by the High Falls Film Festival.
He’s been an active participant in the film festival, interviewing visiting celebrities on stage and as head judge in the festival’s shorts film contests. Jack also is on the boards of Writers and Books, the community literary organization, and of BOA Editions, a national poetry-publishing house, headquartered in Rochester.
He has been married since 1970 to Bonnie Garner, who also retired in 2007 (as assistant superintendent for technology at BOCES 1). The couple has three grown children, including a son who works in the film industry as an editor, and four grandchildren (who’ve become a prime reason to celebrate retirement.)
Catherine Wyler (Artistic Consultant)
Catherine Wyler’s career spans the worlds of film, television and live theater. She has been a studio executive, an independent producer, and she has held leadership positions at major American cultural institutions.
Her productions include the celebrated Warner Bros. film MEMPHIS BELLE, and documentaries for television: Emmy-nominated DIRECTED BY WILLIAM WYLER, released on DVD by Kino International and HOT ON THE TRAIL for the Turner Broadcasting System, both directed by Aviva Slesin. WITNESS TO HOPE, The Life of Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, is a multi-national co-production directed by Judith Dwan Hallet, which became one public television’s most successful pledge shows ever.
At Columbia Pictures (1987-88), she was Senior Vice President of Production, responsible for all narrative films produced by the studio which were based on actual events rather than fiction. She was Director of Cultural and Children’s Programming at PBS (1981-86), responsible for all national programming in those areas. At the National Endowment for the Arts (1978-81), she was Assistant Director of the Media Arts Program, and a key figure in the creation of The Sundance Institute.
She has served as an international film festival juror at Venice, Sundance, Berlin, Chicago and Istanbul. Wyler serves on the Film Advisory Committee of the National Gallery of Art and the Advisory Committee of Women in Film and Video in Washington, DC. She has recently been published in the Middle East Times and the Turkish Daily News. She and her husband, Richard Rymland, live in Washington, DC. They have five children.
