The Cityvisions' Judges


Ian Bricke
Programmer, The Sundance Channel

Ian Bricke is Manager, Film Programming for Sundance Channel, responsible for English-language features, world cinema, and short films. Before joining the Channel, he worked at Killer Films on projects including Storytelling and Hedwig and the Angry Inch and at the Independent Feature Project on three consecutive Independent Feature Film Markets. He also worked in development for Open City Films and Pipedream Productions. He has appeared on panels at South by Southwest, the Sundance Film Festival, the IFP Market, and the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. He has also served on juries at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the New York Exposition of Short Film and Video, the Anchorage Film Festival, and the Austin Film Festival. A graduate of Swarthmore College, he is a native of Kansas.


Dorothy Thigpen
Executive Director, Third World Newsreel

Dorothy Thigpen is currently the Executive Director of Third World Newsreel, one of the oldest alternative media arts organizations in the US. TWN is committed to the creation and appreciation of media by people of color and people of developing countries around the world, offering education, screenings and distribution for independent media artists. She was previously Director of Production Assistance at Women make Movies, and operations Director at ACTV 21 Cable 21 in Columbus Ohio, as well as assistant to the Festival Coordinator at the National Black programming consortium. Her video work has screened in the MIX Experimental Film/Video Festival. Dorothy has also served on non-profit boards such as Flaherty Seminars and the New Festival.


Rick Smigielski
Documentary Filmmaker, Producer & Writer

Rick Smigielski is New York based documentary producer and writer. His work has appeared on PBS, ABC, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and has been featured at numerous festivals including Sundance and the Chicago International Film Festival. His subjects have ranged from professional gamblers to American presidents, from the Jews of Eastern Europe to the history of American Cinema. He worked as a senior producer for the A&E series Take this Job… and Inside Stories. He has produced reports for PBS’s Media Matters, a two-hour special for the History Channel Choosing Sides, I Remember Vietnam, and the independent documentaries Fire’capes and Spark Amongst the Ashes. For two seasons he was a producer for WNET's Peabody winning series City Arts where he covered New York City’s art community and was twice nominated for Emmys. His focus on New York city continued at Gotham TV, Metro Channel’s Emmy winning weekly series on life in the greater Metropolitan area. Rick has written documentary scripts for CBS News Productions and Hallmark entertainment. Most recently we worked on PBS’s series History Detectives. He graduated from NYU.