Independent since 1997 – The Green Mountain Film Festival is returning to Montpelier and Central Vermont in March 2025! We are grateful for your support to make this coming year’s festival a beautiful and expansive weekend of international and local film!
The now 24 year old Green Mountain Film Festival returned to Montpelier, Vermont in March 2024 after a 4 year hiatus. Since 1997, we have offered unique independent film programming in our downtown Montpelier and Central Vermont community — showcasing narrative, documentary, and experimental features and shorts from all over the world!
2024 GMFF Film Bumper
~ Meet Our Team ~
The GMFF Team & Advisory Board is composed of local Vermont filmmakers, festival programmers, nonprofit professionals, and film enthusiasts.
Phayvanh Luekhamhan
Advisory Board Chair
Phayvanh was Montpelier Alive’s Executive Director from 2011-2014, and has been a staunch supporter of collaborative, creative community building.
She is co-creator of PoemCity, former coordinator of Montpelier Art Walk, and piloted the City’s parklet project. Phayvanh spent five years on VTDigger’s business team, growing the digital ad revenue fourfold with combined digital ad management and new product development.
She later went on to work with LION Publishers, a national organization that supports independent news businesses in the US and Canada. Currently, she is executive director for the Center for Arts and Learning, a nonprofit arts hub in downtown Montpelier. She cooks, crafts, and conspires during her free time.
Christopher Wiersema
Festival Director
Christopher Wiersema (he/him) is a Vermont based award-winning media artist, educator, and arts administrator, working in experimental film, documentary practice, and community media. He is the founder and director of the Vermont Youth Documentary Lab.
Originally from the Chicagoland area, his work has been screened internationally and featured on Vermont Public, Indiana Public Media, and Democracy Now!
His most recent project, Rough Blazing Star, is the 2024 winner of the Vermont Public Award for Best Documentary at the Made Here Film Festival in Burlington, Vermont, and is being distributed with the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre.
Christopher lives in Central Vermont, with his partner and their two sons, where he currently serves as Executive Director of Mad River Valley Television and adjunct faculty at Norwich University’s Department of Global Humanities.
Sam Kann
Festival Programmer
Sam Kann (they/she) is a Vermont-based artist and programmer working across dance, theater, and film. They are committed to personal stories that reveal the intimate and the absurd. Most recently, Sam directed a music video for Maria BC’s single “Lacuna” and produced the music video for Lucy Dacus’ “Night Shift.” Sam’s previous work has been shown at The Flynn, the Provincetown Film Festival, and Middlebury College, as well as DIY venues and non-traditional spaces including the Plex Arts Festival, Life World, and various parking lots around New England. With the support of the BCA Community Fund, they are directing a community performance in Burlington this Fall.
Theresa Murray-Clasen
Sponsorship Manager
Born and raised in upstate New York, spending summers in and around Bennington VT, it was a great job that led Theresa to Vermont.
After completing two and a half years in the US Peace Corps/Micronesia, she traveled the state working with regulated utilities while leading the Vermont Department of Public Service’s Consumer Advocacy Division.
Following the birth of two daughters, her professional work has crossed a variety of public sectors; sustainable food systems in public schools, food security within community, the advent of nonprofit digital media, and real estate.
She has served and continues to serve on numerous non-profit boards including "All Brains Belong," a community medical practice that focuses on neurodiversity and equitable inclusion within community, and the Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools Partners in Education.
A long time community volunteer, she is a fervent believer in collaborative, creative community building.
2025 GMFF Advisory Board
Sarah Wisner
Sarah Wisner (she/her) is a writer, filmmaker, and administrative professional. She is passionate about representation, collaboration, and finding the heart of the story asking to be told. With a deep focus on character-driven story, Sarah has assisted in the development of industry feature films as the deputy to a top producer, written and directed her own ward-winning short films, and collaborated with writers and directors on feature-length projects. She received her MFA in Film from Boston University and her BA from Smith College with honors in English. She currently works as a librarian in central Vermont.
MC DeBelina
MC DeBelina (She/They) studied Biology and Dance at Dartmouth College and combined her two passions at Sarah Lawrence College receiving an MFA in Dance. MC founded the Hopkins Center’s Children’s Creative Dance Program at Dartmouth in 2005. As a faculty member at Dartmouth she was fortunate to perform with, and choreograph for, the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble. In 2013 MC completed the Dance for Parkinson's Teacher Training Workshop in Brooklyn; she taught classes in Philadelphia at 954 Movement Collective and now Vermont. MC also teaches a number of children and adult classes at Contemporary Dance and Fitness Studio in addition to creating her own work when she can.
MC is the current Executive Director of the Vermont Dance Alliance, a non-profit that supports and promotes dancers and dance makers in Vermont. MC finds dance in everything and currently her biggest inspirations are her four children.
Carlos Diaz
Carlos Diaz is a cinematographer and editor from Puerto Rico who relocated to Montpelier VT where he is raising his daughters. Graduated from The American Film Institute with an MFA in Cinematography. His Thesis film was short-listed for the student Academy Awards.
He has worked as a multimedia journalist in the Southeast Boston and new England area, nominated for an Emmy in multimedia journalism. He spend a lot of time thinking about art, theory, technique and the intersection between them. Drawing from his background in experimental media and traditional narrative structures, he explores the life breath of an image and how to translate the words of story into the visual.
His images have been shown at the MOMA, Istanbul Biennial, Whitney Biennial, Amsterdam International Documentary Festival and Havana Film Festival, and have appeared on MTVLA, and the documentary series ART21.
Sean Temple
Sean Temple (they/he) is a local Director, Editor, Screenwriter, and Video Artist. They believe that cinema’s unique ability to tell character-driven stories through image and sound enhances our capacity for empathy. Sean earned an MFA in Media Arts from Emerson College. Their award-winning genre films, co-directed with Sarah Wisner, have been showcased at numerous festivals and contests, including Fantastic Fest, Beyond Fest, Proof Film Festival, Green Mountain Film Festival, and the Independent Film Festival Boston. Sean's professional editing work includes creating and producing theatrical trailers, television campaigns, and social media spots for clients like Netflix, Sony, IFC Films, and more.
Jolynda Burton
A vocal performance major at NYU, Jolynda spent a number of years as a performing artist and arts administrator in New York City after college. In 2017, she returned to her home state of Vermont with a breadth of nonprofit management experience gained in NYC and Philly. She has worked with Just Basics, the nonprofit that runs the Montpelier Food Pantry, is very active with the school community, and served 4 years on the board of MRPS Partners in Education (PIE).
Jolynda joined Monteverdi Music School at the end of 2022 to expand music education opportunities and strengthen the 40-year-old community music school. Her favorite thing is connecting the community with the arts in innovative, unexpected, and beautifully human ways.
Lukas Huffman
Hailing from Montpelier, Vermont, Lukas Huffman spent 10 years as a professional snowboarder traveling the globe and pushing the progression of the sport. After hanging up his professional snowboard boots, Lukas moved to New York City to attend Columbia University where he received a bachelor's degree in film studies. After 15 years of living in NYC and working as a freelance filmmaker he moved with his family back to Montpelier. Lukas is a co-founder of the Vermont Production Collective and is passionate about strengthening the Vermont filmmaking community. Lukas' documentary films have been featured on Vice Media, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Vermont Public, and his award-winning narrative films have screened in festivals around the world. He is a creative director at Driven Studio in Burlington, Vermont.
Green Mountain Film Festival - Land Acknowledgment
The Green Mountain Film Festival celebrates cinema and community in N’dakinna [in-DAH-kee-NAH], the traditional and unceded land of the Western Abenaki people. We are grateful to work on this land and recognize the dispossession and oppression of Indigenous communities across North America, and their resiliency. We encourage our audience to learn more about the land you are on by visiting native-land.ca