MWFF Critics Lab 2021: Meet the mentors
We’re thrilled to announce that Cerise Howard and Laura La Rosa will be joining us as mentors for the 2021 MWFF Critics Lab! In just a few weeks they will be talking all things criticism with this year’s cohort of emerging critics. Keep an eye out for their work online as we approach this year's festival!
Cerise Howard is a New Zealand-born co-curator of the Melbourne Cinémathèque who co-founded the Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia and was its Artistic Director from 2013-2018. A Studio Leader at RMIT University specialising in incubating film festivals and contesting the canon, Cerise is a regular commentator on intersections of film, gender, sexuality and other matters, and co-hosted the 3RRR film criticism show and podcast "Plato’s Cave" from 2014-2019.
Her recent writing on film can be found in Senses of Cinema, Metro, on the byNWR website, daily in the 2017 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival newspaper, in a new monograph on Peter Strickland and in a forthcoming one on Bride of Frankenstein.
She has been a member of the International Jury Board of the East-West: Golden Arch Awards, founded in Moscow, for its two editions to date since 2018, and is presently preparing a lecture for The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies on trans and other gender-non-conforming bodies in horror cinema, to be delivered online in May.
Away from film she plays bass for Queen Kong and The HOMOsapiens, a Melbourne-based punk, performance art, queer rock band.
Laura La Rosa is a published writer, critic and practising graphic designer.
Her written work encompasses memoir, film and literary critique, as well as essays that discuss themes of race, class, feminism and popular culture. With bylines in Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, SBS, Sydney Review of Books, Eureka Street and The Big Issue, Laura aims to foster disruptive discourse that challenges the status quo.
She has been an active voice in critiquing contemporary white feminism within Australia and has been involved in numerous grassroots activist-based initiatives.
Laura completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Graphic Design) through Charles Sturt University, receiving two Dean's awards for academic excellence. Her design portfolio spans small start-ups, digital and arts initiatives. She was the sole designer of The Lifted Brow's Blak Brow edition and most recently built the digital platforms for Wollongong Writers Festival and Feminist Writers Festival's 2020 online programs.
In 2020, Laura taught design at RMIT to editing and publishing students. She is passionate about the entire creative production process - be it written, visual and/or user-experienced-based. Her written and visual creative work foregrounds the importance of representation and elevation of those outside the dominant mainstream.
She is an avid consumer and critic of screen works and is currently in the early stages of post-graduate cultural studies.
Having spent 3.5 years in Melbourne, Laura recently returned to Western Sydney (Dharug country) to focus on community, memoir and historian-focussed projects. A proud Darug and Calabrian woman, Laura currently lives on the land she grew up on; the land her kin and ancestors have nurtured for tens of thousands of years.