ROFF 2024
Thank you to all of our artists, volunteers, sponsors, performers and organizers of ROFF 2024! This year charmed us all with budding friendships, true artist support, and films that had us talking all night long. This festival is a success because of your involvement. Thank you for a great year. Listed below are the 2024 “Roffie” Award winners.
Be sure to stay in touch and stay tuned for ROFF 2025! If you would like to get involved drop us a line below with how you envision helping out.
Special thanks to NYFA’s Queen’s Art Fund! We are proud 2024 grantees
2024 ROFFIES
2024 ROFFIES
Wyatt Bertz
The Mind-Bottle Problem
Wyatt Bertz is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn. His bright, playful work finds irony in the post-capitalist landscape, and explores a friendlier future. His whimsical characters, animations, drawings and 3D sculptures have been featured in galleries and film festivals such as Coaxial Arts, CLEARSKY WEST, Ridgewood Off-Kilter, Living Gallery, and more. His clients span from Hasbro, a megalithic corporation, to Newtown Creek Alliance, a small community nonprofit. He is also a music composer and producer, with music distributed by labels such as Transgressive Records, The Orchard, and Thirty Tigers.
Biff Hartwell and Mitchell Pollitt
Body Snatcher
Whether cranking out low-budget films or putting on original musicals in their basement, Biff Hartwell and Mitchell Pollitt are committed to free, DIY art that brings together artists of many different mediums. They met at their college's Cult Cinema Club and have been creative collaborators ever since. They are very grateful to have been part of the Ridgewood Off-Kilter Film Festival!
Molly Wurwand and Ryan McGlade
My Imaginary Life For Someone
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Molly Wurwand blurs the intersection of the dreamy and the deranged. They are inspired by performances of genders + plastic surgery + pseudo-celebrity + simulacrum + the hypnotic discomfort of being alive inside a body.
Ryan McGlade is a writer, director, and editor. His films have screened at festivals worldwide including Palm Springs International ShortFest, Tacoma Film Festival, Montclair Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival, and the Bushwick Film Festival, where his film HOSS was awarded the Programmer's Choice Award for Best Narrative Short in 2020. Additionally, his film BUDDYMOVIE was awarded Best U.S. Narrative at the 2022 Drunken Film Fest Oakland and Best Lo-Budget Film at the 2023 London Short Film Festival. His work has also been featured online on NoBudge, Filmmaker Magazine, Eternal Family, Talkhouse, The Film Stage, and Bloody Disgusting.
Sarah Bex Rice
Slim Jim
Sarah Bex Rice is an enthusiast of experimental films, re-use of archival material and all things fine times. Much of Rice’s work remixes her and her family’s own archive to revisit personal nostalgia through a broader lens. She currently programs for Brooklyn Film Festival and also works in archival film/video licensing.
Chen Qiang and
Nose
Chen Qiang graduated from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1998 having studied video art and experimental image. He exhibits his work around the word and has been honored at the 2023 Taiwan Golden Horse Awards, 2013 Hong Kong ifva Asian Power Short Film Festival, 2024 India Labraji International Film Festival, and now alongside his daughter and collaborator, at Ridgewood Off-Kilter Film Festival 2024
Percy Manthey
Zipwharf
Percy Manthey is a young filmmaker from Hounslow, London. Born in 2003, he aims to create films that are sincere reflections of how his generation interfaces with the increasingly stranger world. Using the twin hammers of 'wit' and 'irony', he forges surreal-ish satire about shallow aspirations and the rot in London's core.
thank you to all the people who made ROFF’s first year such a success. It was a joy to come together as a community of creative filmmaking freaks. Please keep us in the loop with your projects, successes, and future ideas.
<3
Stay tuned for ROFF 2024 and please reach out if you have any interest in helping this festival grow. Below we have listed the winner’s of year 0 ROFFIES!
2023
Carla de Jesus Jerez
The Girlgang AU
Best Directix
Carla de Jesus Jerez is an artist/ filmmaker with a special interest in digitized girlness and new media. She has co-founded the artist collective witchess! through which she has premiered her recent works: “The Girlgang AU,” as well as the short film “Offline,” which was selected for 2021 season of PBS “Film-maker.” A producer of digital content by trade, her creative work has played at diverse venues such as the Adrienne Arsht Center, Tower Theater Miami, ebaumsworld.com...and Ridgewood Off-kilter!
Hanna Milos
Your Friend, Anne
Most Exotic filming location
Hanna Milos is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Milwaukee, WI. Her work is based in the spirit of play, with a charming sense of humor and an unpretentious attitude. Her films lie at the intersection of humor and horror, and her visual work is largely influenced by American traditional tattoos and pop culture.
Kameron Millner
EVE
Best use of Subways and fruit
Kameron is a director, screenwriter and video editor who occasionally moonlights as a 1st AD. Currently focusing on short form content, she’s excited to continue to tell stories in genuine, thoughtful and innovative ways.
Eli Kluger
A shot Before Dinner
Best use of fried chicken
The son of a Metal Refiner, Eli spent the hot 100 degree plus Arizona summers sorting electronic components and dreaming of becoming a filmmaker inspired by the films of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. Kluger has shot shorts, music videos and a performance documentary called Phoenix Rising which detailed the then up and coming local music scene (2008), and featured such bands as AJJ, along with some acting as well.
Tyler Harmon Townsend
La Bufadora
Best Cinematography
Tyler studied film at UNC school for the Arts. He went on to have success as a gaffer, lighting for filmmakers like Rick Alverson and Kathleen Propper. Tyler made his debut as a feature DP on La Bufadora. He is an extremely talented and kind individual who also founded and runs a battery business: THT batteries in Ridgewood, Queens.