INTERNATIONAL JURY OF THE FIFTH EDITION OF ROMA WEB FEST 2017

Young Man Kang

Director Young Man Kang directed five feature films, three web series and a documentary. All feature films have been released on DVD in the US, and have sold in over 15 countries so far with his six films. He has a total of 11 awards from a number of film festivals.
Director Young Man Kang collaborated with fellow Avatar alumni, Just Cause 3d, on his 4d Experience Project, was one of the first in the world to use a 4D 5G grandeur theater ad in 2010. In 2013, a web series ‘Kimchi Warrior’ The Korean version of Popeye (TM), a martial arts comedy that has gained international recognition and won 3 awards at LAWEBFEST 2014 and ‘AREX Airport Railroad won an award at LAWEBFEST 2016. ‘Doppelganger’ receives two award nominations at Melbourne WebFest. He is founder and executive director of the KWEB FEST, the first ever web series festival in Korea & Northeast Asia.

Meredith Burkholder

Based in Berlin, Germany, Meredith Burkholder began her career in New York City as a freelance commercial photography producer and production manager for television – a graduate of Boston University, she worked in nearly every major market across the United States for 10 years. She has worked alongside industry leading advertising agencies, production companies, and photographers on national campaigns for clients including American Express, Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart, Nestle, and Exxon Mobil – her television credits include projects for Lifetime, MTV, VH1, Oxygen, and the Food Network. In 2011, she and Lucas Fortes DaSilva founded the Marketing and Production company, Et Tu Tableau. In 2015 she founded the first international digital series festival in Germany – Webfest Berlin. The second edition of Webfest Berlin took place on September 9-10, 2016.

Nina Heinrich

Nina Heinrich, based in Hamburg, studied media, popular culture, literature and arts. Her master thesis addresses the curation of digital entertainment content. She works in cultural management, where she managed various international projects, and as editor for publishing companies in Hamburg. As part of the creative collective Reclaimed Marshland, that produced the web series „Kumbaya!“ (2013) and „Gut Holz“ (2016), she founded the Wendie Webfest Hamburg in 2016, the first festival for independent series in the hanseatic city.

Michael Ajakwe Jr

Michael Ajakwe Jr:  Not only is he the founder of the world’s first and largest web series festival(LAWEBFEST), Mike is also an Emmy-winning TV producer (E!’s “Talk Soup”), 2-time NAACP Image Award-winning TV documentary producer (TV One’s “Unsung”), 2-time Image Award-winning theater producer and playwright (“Ted Lange’s 4 Queens, No Trump”, “Company Policy”), and a veteran TV comedy writer-producer (“Martin”, “Sister Sister”, “Eve”).    Since 2010, Mike has personally watched all of the nearly 2000 web series that have been submitted to his festival (over 25,000 webisodes) and his expertise is sought worldwide.  The theme of the 8th Annual Los Angeles Web Series Festival being held in April at legendary Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood will be “ADAPTATION:  An Effective Way To Make Money From Your Web Series”.  Mike knows this first hand.  He successfully adapted his web series (“Who…”) into a television series (“Beauty and the Baller”) and recently sold the TV adaptation to international entertainment giant Viacom to air on its B.E.T. cable network starting in October 2016.  For more information on LAWEBFEST, please visit www.lawebfest.com.

Csongor Dobrotka

Csongor Dobrotka is a director, screenwriter and producer. He studied “Drama, Theatre, Media” at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at Justus Liebig University Giessen. In 2008, he directed his first feature film “Trennschärfe”. Since 2009 he works also at “Hessen Film and Media Academy (hFMA)”, a network of the 13 film & media universities in Hessen. In 2011 he founded the production company DOBAGO FILM. He is also director and co-creator of the multi award winning web series “Number of Silence”. In 2016 he founded a network for web series creators in Germany.