About

Ken oversees all aspects of the festival including fundraising and sponsor relations, program development, management of staff and volunteers, budgeting, and producing the festival each fall.

Ken Jacobson was most recently Senior Programmer, Documentary Films at the Sonoma International Film Festival. He has served as Documentary Film Programmer at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (since 2017) and at the DocLands Documentary Film Festival (since 2019). He is also co-creator/co-host (with Michael Merrill) of the podcast “Top-Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers” with presenting sponsor Netflix.

Previously, Jacobson was a senior member of the programming team at the American Film Institute (2018-2021) and Director of Educational Programs and Strategic Partnerships at the International Documentary Association (2013 – 2016). From 2008- 2013, he was Documentary Programmer and Programming/Education Outreach Coordinator at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. He has served on numerous festival juries and as a grant reviewer for the NEA, NEH, Sundance Institute, and IDA Enterprise Fund.

Kyle Therral Wilson is an Arkansas-native, Los Angeles-based consultant specializing in copywriting, digital marketing, publicity, and creative writing. He has extensive experience in the publishing industry, most notably at Disney Publishing Worldwide, where he built email marketing campaigns and wrote interactive scripts for classic Disney characters. Kyle also writes and produces for stage and screen; his short film SFH was an official selection at the 2024 Cinema Diverse Film Festival in Palm Springs, California.

Oversees daily operations and logistics including venue management, sponsor communications, transportation and housing.

Annie Gerber is a native Arkansan who has a Bachelor of Fine arts in music from Ouachita Baptist University but later switched her main focus to film and photography. Annie spent several years working as a Teaching Assistant at the prestigious photography program at the School of Cinematic and Performing Arts in both New York and Los Angeles. For the past 5 years she has maintained her position as the Director of Operations for the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.

Robin Robinson is dedicated to independent film. Currently the Programming & Content Coordinator for Mountainfilm, she has also served as the Programming Coordinator for the Academy Award-qualifying Nashville Film Festival where she managed the Screenwriting Competition and served as a Senior Programmer.

She has experience programming narrative, documentary, episodic, new director, and family films. In addition to her programming experience, she has served as a screener and reader for the 2018 AT&T Create-a-Thon as well as a Finalist Judge. She received an M.F.A. in Film with a focus in screenwriting at the Watkins College of Film in 2018.

With over a decade of film festival experience, Colleen has served as the co-Executive Director of the Fayetteville Film Festival, the Film Programming Assistant at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the founding Director of Programming of Tulsa American Film Festival.

As an Indigenous documentary storyteller, Colleen films explore the relationships between humans and the natural world and focus on Native stories and perspectives. She has produced work for the Smithsonian Channel, Vox, illumiNATIVE and museums, public television stations, and federal and tribal organizations. She currently serves as the Project Coordinator for Native Lens, a collaborative Indigenous digital series for Rocky Mountain PBS and KSUT Tribal Radio.

Colleen holds an MFA from Montana State University’s Science and Natural History Filmmaking program. Her BA in Media Arts and Anthropology is from the University of Arizona. She also teaches documentary studies and film production as an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma.

Colleen is a Firelight Media Doc Lab alum, a 2022 Sundance Institute Indigenous Film Fund Fellow, and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Sean Volk is a Programmer at Mountain Film and is the Narrative Feature Programmer at the Woods Hole Film Festival. Sean works as the Development and Engagement Manager at the Fargo Theatre, a non-profit art house cinema in Fargo, ND. In addition to this role, Sean serves as the Programming Coordinator for the Fargo Film Festival. Sean has a MA in Film Studies at Western University in London, Ontario.