Uwe B. Carstensen is known as a dramaturge, editor, and theatre director. After studying German, English, and Romance studies, as well as art history, he began working as assistant director at the State Theatre in Stuttgart and the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg in 1979. From 1983 to 1990, he was employed as dramaturge at the Bavarian State Theatre („Residenztheater“) where he undertook the enactment of individual plays. Since 1990, he has been working at S.Fischer publishers in Frankfurt am Main. There, he leads the department „Theatre, Film and Television“, and publishes contemporary theatre plays within the scope of the series „Theatre Theatre“.

At the tender age of eleven, Andreas Heidenreich started his film and cinema career at the Youth Film Club Reutlingen – the beginning of a great passion. His next stops were the Student Film Club at the TU Darmstadt, the municipal cinema in Weiterstadt, as well as the local open-air festival. At present, he is part of numerous film festivals in the Rhine-Main Area: the Nippon Connection, the exground filmfest, and the goEast Festival. Since 2000, he has been active at the film archive of the German Film Institute in Wiesbaden and responsible for the programming of the Caligari Filmbühne. He is the chairman of the Bundesverband Kommunale Filmarbeit and a member of the German Federal Film Board’s and Cinema Commission’s administrative council.

In her work as director, film author and producer, Lilo Mangelsdorff has specialized in documentary and experimental film. Her projects are produced by her production company Cinetix GmbH, founded in 1983 with her colleague Wolfgang Schlemmert. She is not an unknown at LICHTER anymore: two of the films she produced, have been shown in the regional competition in the last few years. In 2014, she was represented by Wenn Pferde träumen (When Horses dream) and in 2016 by Unterwegs in der Musik – die Komponistin Barbara Heller (On the go with Music – the composer Barbara Heller). Wenn Pferde träumen won both the first place and the cinema price at the Choreographic Captures competition. She lives and works in Frankfurt am Main.

Since February 2017, Eckart Köberich has been Head of VR at ZDF Digital. From late 2014 to January 2017, he managed the 360° and VR development project for ZDF. During this time, more than thirty 360° productions and platforms for IOS, Android, Google Daydream and the web platform vr.zdf.de were realized. The VR Unit at ZDF Digital, which was set up in 2016, produces 360° films and interactive Virtual Reality applications. Moreover, it involves and actively promotes the exploration of the new medium of VR. In 2017, he was also a jury member and curator of the VR Storytelling contest, the VR Conference and VR Trade Fair at LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International.

Vanessa Kincaid is a founding member and the Chief Brand Officer at Littlstar, the largest global platform dedicated to immersive virtual and augmented reality content. The platform allows consumers to discover, watch, and share content on all major virtual reality headsets, native mobile iOS and Android, Apple TV and Android TV, and the web. Littlstar’s proprietary technology distributes immersive content from global brands such as Disney, Sony, ABC, NBC, Fox, Universal, Showtime, A+E Networks, Syfy, Sony, Discovery VR, National Geographic, and more. Prior to building Littlstar, Vanessa was the Design Director at DKNY and Partner at Basta Studio – a New York based design studio & consultancy firm.

Stefanie Böttcher is an art historian and curator. Since 2015, she has been the director of Kunsthalle Mainz, where she curated among others a solo exhibition with Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué and the duo show Daniel Buren & Bettina Pousttchi. 2017 she was the curator of the Icelandic Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia. She worked as artistic director of the Künstlerhaus Bremen from 2007 until 2013, where she gave young international artists such as Lara Almarcegui, Ahmet Öğüt or Kateřina Šedá their first solo shows in Germany. In 2013, the Goethe-Institute awarded her a curatorial research stipend for Serbia, and the same year she co-curated the group exhibition 8 Ways to Overcome Space and Time at the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade.

Since July 2016 Sergey Harutoonia is the Deputy Head of Collection of the MMK Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt am Main, where he is currently in charge of the collection presentation of the MMK and exhibitions on young, emerging artists. Prior to that he was involved as a freelance art historian in various art exhibition projects in Frankfurt am Main.

Saul Judd is an independent curator based in Frankfurt, Germany. Since 2010 he is responsible for the video art section of the LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International. He conceived exhibitions with artists such as Keren Cytter and Mike Bouchet in the context of the festival until he created the LICHTER Art Award in 2011. He started to curate the LICHTER Short Films International program in 2015. Among his project BLANK SLATE a publication about art, architecture and design he started in 2016 with SCHAUT! – a series of exhibitions of contemporary art film and video art at the MAL SEH’N movie theater in Frankfurt. In 2017 he presented the artist John Skoog as a guest curator for Double Feature at SCHIRN Kunsthalle.