Respected Hollywood and media personalities will serve on the Features, Documentaries and Shorts juries of the 9th Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA), the organization announced today. The festival runs April 12-17 at ArcLight Hollywood in Los Angeles, California.

IFFLA Executive Director Christina Marouda said, "We are very appreciative to have such distinguished members of the film industry join us.  From academics and acting to filmmaking and journalism their varied expertise offers a well-rounded perspective to this year's jury." 

Jurors include Shaz Bennett, Susan Cartsonis, Parvesh Cheena, Myriam Despujoulets, Grace Lee, Cheng-Sim Lim, Claudia Puig, Ravi Kapoor and Robert Koehler.

The awards will be given out after the red carpet arrivals on Sunday, April 17th, prior to the closing night gala and world premiere screening of Walt Disney Pictures' ZOKKOMON which will be followed by a reception.

The 2011 IFFLA Jurors are:

Features

Susan Cartsonis was an executive at Twentieth Century Fox for nearly a decade, rising from script reader to Sr. VP of Production, developing and supervising NELL, THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS, ROOKIE OF THE YEAR, and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, among others, before starting her own company, Storefront Pictures. In 2000, The Hollywood Reporter named her one of the five top-grossing producers of the year for WHAT WOMEN WANT and WHERE THE HEART IS. She recently produced BEASTLY starring Vanessa Hudgens, Neil Patrick Harris, and Alex Pettyfer. Susan executive produced NO RESERVATIONS and MISTRESS OF SPICES starring Aishwarya Rai. She was recently elected Chair of the Foundation Board of Trustees of Women in Film and has served on the Independent Film Producers Committee at the Producers Guild of America.

Robert Koehler is a film critic for Variety, Cinema Scope, Cineaste and Film Comment, and director of programming for Festworks. He has contributed film criticism and writing to a range of publications, including Cahiers du Cinema and Die Tageszeitung, as well as theater criticism for the Los Angeles Times. He is a member of FIPRESCI and has served as a juror at festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Vancouver, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Indie Lisboa, Santiago, Palm Springs, Los Angeles and San Francisco Latino festivals. Robert was Director of Programming at AFI Fest in 2009. As a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, he serves as a programmer for the ongoing series,  The Films That Got Away.  He is the author of essays appearing in the anthology film books  On Film Festivals  and  Cine Argentino 98/09.

Cheng-Sim Lim is an independent film curator and filmmaker with over 17 years of programming experience in a wide range of American and international cinemas. Her work, including as the co-head of programming at the UCLA Film & Television Archive from 2001 to 2008, has helped to build audiences and appreciation in the US for filmmakers and video artists from Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Retrospectives that she has curated have toured North America and Europe to critical acclaim. Cheng-Sim has served on grants, awards and film festival juries. While she has recently returned to filmmaking, her curatorial interests remain undiminished, especially in advocating for overlooked popular and  minor  cinemas and media literacy.

Documentaries

Shaz Bennett is a writer/filmmaker/performance artist/voiceover artist/film critic and programmer, and she has written and directed the award winning films MARTINI, TUNNELS, and TOP OF THE CIRCLE. Shaz has worked in and around film festivals for over 20 years. She was the Associate Director of Programming at AFI FEST for ten years and has worked for the Los Angeles Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival. Shaz worked for the Sundance Institute tracking projects for the film and theatre labs and screening films for the festival. She has served on festival juries and panels at film festivals worldwide, and was on the selection committee for the LA Film Festival and the IDA Humanitas Award jury. Shaz writes regularly for Moving Pictures, La Vie de Boheme and Next Films.

Grace Lee is an award winning producer/writer/director who is currently in production on AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY, a documentary about 95-year-old Detroit philosopher and activist Grace Lee Boggs.  Her other credits include the feature AMERICAN ZOMBIE and documentaries THE GRACE LEE PROJECT, CAMP ARIRANG and BEST WURST. Grace received her MFA in Directing from UCLA Film School where her thesis film BARRIER DEVICE won a Student Academy Award and Directors Guild of America award.  She is the recipient of the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Media, a Rockefeller Media Arts grant, the PPP Pusan Prize as well as funding from the NEA, Center for Asian American Media, UCLA Institute for American Cultures and others.

Claudia Puig has been a film critic at USA Today since 2001 and is also a regular contributor for NPR s Film Week. She has discussed the socio-cultural impact of movies on NBC News, CNN, MSNBC and Mitch Albom s radio show and programs in Boston and Washington DC. She was named Entertainment Journalist of the Year in 2009 by the Publicists Guild. Claudia began her journalism career in 1986 at the Los Angeles Times. She was part of the team that won a Pulitzer for its coverage of the 1991 L.A. riots. In 1993 she began covering primarily the movie business and still writes news stories and features, concentrating mostly on film reviews. Claudia has a B.A. in Communications Studies from UCLA and an M.A. in Communications from University of Southern California s Annenberg School.

Shorts

Parvesh Cheena is a prolific theater, television, and film actor. A native of Naperville, Illinois, Parvesh is also a musical theater graduate from the Chicago College of Performing Arts. His credits include TV s  Brothers and Sisters,   ER,   Sons of Tucson  and, most recently,  Outsourced.  Parvesh made his film debut in BARBERSHOP and reprised his role in the sequel. He also appeared opposite Diane Keaton in BECAUSE I SAID SO. Other credits include guest appearances in the short films THE BIG EMPTY opposite Selma Blair and FLY LIKE MERCURY directed by Harry Lennix and produced by David Schwimmer. Feature film roles include the upcoming HOUSE BROKEN opposite Danny DeVito, THE OTHER END OF THE LINE, and THE ODE, based on the acclaimed novel by Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla.

Myriam Despujoulets is Programmer of Seminars and Administrator of Fellow Affairs at the American Film Institute Conservatory, where she programs screenings, guest speakers and special events. A native of France, Myriam worked in film and events programming and cultural affairs at Le Louvre Museum, La Cit  des Sciences et de l Industrie, the M6 television network and the PR agency Le Public Syst me in Paris. She produced events for the Deauville American Film Festival, the Cognac International Thriller Film Festival, and the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. After moving to the United States, she worked for the Sundance Film Festival, AFI FEST and the City of Lights/City of Angels Film Festival (COLCOA) before joining the staff at AFI. Myriam is a member of the selection committee and advisory board for National Geographic s All Roads Film Festival.

Ravi Kapoor is an actor, writer and director. His acting work includes series regular roles on ABC's GIDEON'S CROSSING and NBC'S CROSSING JORDAN (for which he also directed), various BBC dramas, the feature film WILD WEST and, more recently, RASPBERRY MAGIC. He wrote and directed OH SWEET SITA, a verse play that ran in London and Toronto. He also wrote and directed the short film VICTOR RAMIREZ, ASESINO that has been playing at various festivals around the world, including IFFLA 2010 where it premiered. Born and educated in England, Ravi trained at the East 15 Drama School in London before relocating to the United States.

TICKETS AND PASSES - New Procedures this year:

Tickets can now be purchased online at http://indianfilmfestival.org/.

On-site Box Office opens April 8th and tickets can be purchased at The Cinerama Dome, 6360 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028

For more information on box office and the film schedule please visit http://www.indianfilmfestival.org/.