Yale in Hollywood will present its fourth global virtual film festival, Yale in Hollywood Fest, from December 7 to 9, 2023. This three-day line up features 13 short films (3 hours total of streaming content) and live streaming events, all free and open to viewers around the world.
On Saturday, December 9 at 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT, the Yale in Hollywood Fest Awards will be live-streamed on the festival website and this year’s winners will be announced.
The festival will also present its inaugural Career Achievement Award to Yale alum Justin Noble, known for writing and producing TV series such as The Sex Life of College Girls, Never Have I Ever and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
In addition, the festival will present its second Visionary of the Year Award to Cory Finley, writer and director of Landscape with Invisible Hand starring Tiffany Haddish and distributed by MGM. Yale in Hollywood Fest’s inaugural Visionary of the Year Award was previously presented to Oscar nominee Lee Isaac Chung in 2021.
All festival selections will be juried by an esteemed alumni jury consisting of actress Robinne Lee, actress Elizabeth Greer, and last year’s festival winners and directors Chris Burke and Donna Ong.
Yale in Hollywood Fest showcases features and short films that include at least one Yale student, alumnus or current staff in the starring, producing, writing or directing chair. All events, including screenings and live streams, will be available directly from Yale in Hollywood Fest’s official website.
The full line-up of films and programs is available to browse now.
About the alumni jury of 2023 Yale in Hollywood Fest
Heading features jury is ROBINNE LEE, a Jamaican-American writer, actor, and producer. A graduate of Yale University and Columbia Law School, Robinne has accrued numerous acting credits in both film and television over the past two decades, most notably in “Hitch,” “Seven Pounds,” “Hotel for Dogs,” “13 Going on 30,” “Being Mary Jane,” and the “Fifty Shades” franchise. Her debut novel, The Idea of You, originally published by St. Martin's Press in 2017, is now an international bestseller, with over a dozen foreign translations. Dubbed “the sleeper hit of the pandemic,” by Vogue Magazine, The Idea Of You film is currently being produced by Amazon Prime Studios with Academy Award winner Anne Hathaway in the lead role. Robinne is attached as a producer. An inactive member of the New York Bar, Robinne has also produced various independent films. She regularly speaks on panels and writes for trade magazines regarding the roles of women and actors of color in the industry. Robinne can next be seen in Netflix’s limited series “Jigsaw,” opposite Giancarlo Esposito.
Heading shorts jury is ELIZABETH GREER, an awarded actor who earned an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She works regularly in episodic television, with guest spots and recurring on many shows such as "Succession", "The Morning Show," "Ray Donovan," and many more. She started her acting career on many New York and east coast stages such as Lincoln Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, American Jewish Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre.
Yale college graduate CHRIS BURKE is a veteran of documentary, tv and commercial production across numerous genres, winning an Emmy for directing the PBS doc BLOODY THURSDAY about the hard-fought struggle of Pacific Coast longshoremen to unionize in Depression-era San Francisco. He has created shows for networks including Discovery, A&E, Turner and Food Network, and produced content for Showtime Sports, FOX Sports and more. His feature documentary No Ordinary Campaign won Best Documentary Feature at Yale in Hollywood Fest 2022.
DONNA ONG is an academic turned filmmaker. An American-born Burmese-Chinese, she grew up in Hong Kong and went to Yale University where she majored in Film Studies and Political Science as an undergraduate. She started her career in international diplomacy and political analysis, before returning to her home city to complete a PhD in film history at the University of Hong Kong, only to realize that film production was what she really wanted to do. Since 2019 she has combined her academic research and political expertise in various projects exploring Hong Kong identity. These include producing and directing a forthcoming feature-length documentary about the life and times of a Hong Kong film critic Law Kar, and a ViuTV commissioned Oral History docuseries Expatations (launched in March 2023). In addition to her work in documentary, Donna is interested in fiction films and made a short film Karma’s Meth Nightmare that won an award at the 2022 Yale in Hollywood Film Festival, which received special appraisal from esteemed playwright David Henry Hwang.
Founded and headed by Yale alum Kevin Winston, Yale in Hollywood is a volunteer-run organization based in Los Angeles that connects Yale students and alumni to the entertainment industry. Yale in Hollywood’s Social Chair Quentin Lee is the festival director for Yale in Hollywood Fest 2022. Hannah Ruth Earl and Melissa Johnson are short films and features programmers respectively.
