BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Elected June 2020

Katie Fournell is the Festival Director and Creator of the Okotoks Film Society. As a film and theatre director she wanted to bring a diverse art opportunity to the Southern Alberta town. She has also sat for one term on the Okotoks Arts Council and is often finding time to celebrate her passion for theatre as a director. Katie is also an event planner and has created the Okotoks Hot Chocolate Festival and aided in the creation of Enchanted Okotoks. She is so excited to join the AMAAS board and hopes her passion for creating in Southern Alberta bring more remote artists to the organization.

Elected July 2022

Edmon Rotea is an Edmonton-based documentary and feature film producer. Edmon strives to help filmmakers from all walks of life–including emerging, artistic, newcomer, and LGBTQ2S+ filmmakers–create films about cultural, environmental, and social justice issues. Edmon has a variety of experience working in the areas of food security, healthcare, and union activism that have inspired Edmon to bring more attention and awareness to marginalized populations and workers via storytelling. Edmon is also a board member for FAVA and the International Festival of Winter Cinema (IFWC).

Elected July 2022

Born in Montreal, Luba Diduch is a visual/sound artist working in both digital and analog media. She holds a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, an MFA from the University of Calgary and a PhD in Interdisciplinary/Digital Studies from the Bath School of Art and Design in the UK where her thesis focused on co-creation, distributed authorship and the facilitation of co-creative artworks. Her art practice explores connections between the practices of field recording and audio, augmented reality, animation and video, while traversing themes around wilderness as creative space, embodiment in the landscape, and identity.

Elected June 2023

Jamie McRae is an independent filmmaker, video artist, and arts administrator residing in Edmonton Alberta. His work primarily consists of shooting on celluloid 16mm film, and paper analog collage. His work can be described as punk rock on sedatives, the decay of the human soul. His first completed works relied heavily on bent circuit analog video synthesizers with video feedback looping, and has grown to focus on experimental visual art as a medium. As an arts administrator, he has spent the past 9 years working at The Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta, currently as the Chief of Staff and Director of Production at the organization.

Elected June 2024

Erin Saunders is an animator, illustrator, educator and general maker of things. She’s an alumni of Alberta University of the Arts, graduating with a degree in design and illustration in 2016. She’s been in love with animation since, and has worked as a 3D animator on several films and features, including work for New Machine Studios, Telus Storyhive and the National Film Board. She currently works at the Quickdraw Animation Society, where she has been serving as the Production Director since 2020. 

Elected July 2022

Danielle Wintrip is a Lethbridge based multidisciplinary storyteller and artist with a background in world building, be it through writing, sculpting, filmmaking, and now community building. As one of the founders and current President of the Lethbridge Independent Film Society (LIFS), she is passionate about raising the voices of traditionally overlooked or marginalized communities and spends her free time doing advocacy work for Media Artists across Canada as a Regional Representative for the Prairies and Northwest Territories for IMAA. She is a strong advocate for creating greater equity when it comes to technical know-how and access to tools of the trade, particularly in rural communities, and desires to help diversify the pool of Alberta Media Artists by steadfastly encouraging artists in underrepresented areas to apply for funding.