This year, the Friends of the Festival will have new help in organizing the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival's monthly screenings and October festival. It hired a new program director and development director in March.
The 501c3 brought on K.J. Mohr as program director and Larry Biddle as development director.
â┚¬Å”We are absolutely thrilled to have this caliber of people joining our organization,â┚¬Â said festival president Ken Hodges. â┚¬Å”We are excited with the quality and diversity of both of these individuals and what they will bring to our festival and the community. This is an exciting time for us as we enter our 22nd year of presenting the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival to Tampa Bay.â┚¬ÂÂ
Mohr is the director of Film Program at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, Md., and works independently as a consultant and curator. She has been involved in the electric arts for nearly two decades.
â┚¬Å”I'm thrilled to be joining so great a festival as the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival,â┚¬Â she said. â┚¬Å”I look forward to working with the Tampa Bay community to continue its tradition of excellence and bringing the greatest cutting edge LGBT film to this area!â┚¬ÂÂ
Most recently, Mohr has served as a curator for the Chicago Film Archive, Marymount College Manhattan, University of Maryland, Syracuse University and Bangkok's Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. Her film work and curated programs have appeared at Anthology Film Archives in New York City, Yerba Buena Arts Center in San Francisco and the Museum of Image and Sound in Sao Paulo, Brazil as well as many venues around the world. She has been programming director for Women in the Director's Chair (WIDC), School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has worked in various capacities at Outfest in Los Angeles, Reeling in Chicago, Reel Affirmations in DC, MIX festivals in New York and Brazil, Ladyfest Chicago, Milwaukee Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and the Flaming Film Festival in Minneapolis and others around the country.
Biddle founded PlanningWorks in 1997 and has provided strategy, communications and development guidance to small businesses, nonprofits and community advocacy organizations for more than 35 yrs. As a leading national fundraiser; he has raised more than $350 million for nonprofit organizations.
Biddle established and built development activities for ActionAIDS in Philadelphia to an annual fundraising level of more than $500,000. Twenty years ago under his leadership, as development director of ActionAIDS, he founded the now nationwide program, Dining out for Life. Larry was deemed â┚¬Å”the arbiter of the new hotnessâ┚¬Â in a September 2004 Wired magazine article about his internet and fundraising leadership on the Howard Dean for President Campaign.
He lives in St. Petersburg with his partner of 19 yrs, David Warner, who is the editor of Creative Loafing.
