Staff & Board

Dr. Susan Kerns has been working with film festivals since volunteering for SXSW in the 1990s, including being Milwaukee Film’s first Education Director in the 2010s before becoming a film Professor at Columbia College Chicago. Her book ReFocus: The Films of Susan Seidelman (2023) is the first scholarly volume devoted to the groundbreaking filmmaker. She has also written liner notes for the Eureka! Tank Girl box set and published extensively in areas including disability in film, conjoined twins, comic book adaptations, and the film festival landscape. She has worked in film acquisition and programmed or juried festivals around the world, including co-founding the Chicago Feminist Film Festival, while presenting on film festivals and distribution at SXSW, Art House Convergence, European Network for Cinema and Media Studies, University Film and Video Association, and others. She is currently producing the 16mm horror feature Communicable, the feminist true crime documentary Uncoiled, and the VR experience Scapegoat. (See more at imdb.) She holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Kristen C. Heller is the Managing Director of Milwaukee Film, overseeing the areas of Ticketing, Customer Service, IT/Technical, Cinema Operations, Festival Operations, Events, Volunteers, and Human Resources. After receiving an MBA from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Kristen began working for film festivals including the Sundance Film Festival, the Provincetown International Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, and eventually finding her way to the Milwaukee Film Festival in 2011. Since 2013, she has overseen the Operations department of Milwaukee Film. Kristen is a current member of the Board of Directors of Film Festival Alliance and East Side BID. In her spare time, she enjoys travel, reading, writing, and playing Dungeons & Dragons with her friends.

Dr. Cara Ogburn joined Milwaukee Film in 2011 in a seasonal capacity for two Festivals before joining the full-time, year-round education staff in 2013. Since then, she has held many titles at Milwaukee Film and in 2020 was named Artistic Director; in this role she leads the organization’s artistic vision, strategy, and film programming structure. Cara is a current member of the Board of Directors of Art House Convergence, a past member (and past President) of the Board of Directors of Film Festival Alliance, and engages with many other national efforts to strengthen our field and bring more visibility to our city and organization.

Rachel Vander Weit was conceived in her father’s park ranger trailer in Stevens Point, WI. She graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a masters in Art History and Museum Studies. After working at the Milwaukee Art Museum in the curatorial department for many years, Rachel jumped over to Milwaukee Film in 2016. She is dedicated to Milwaukee’s creative communities. She loves Parker Posey and the movie Party Girl. She lives and plays in Walker’s Point, loves the Milwaukee Ballet, and you can catch her looking for birds in Lakeshore State Park. One day she hopes to live out Grey Gardens with her friends, but much cleaner and more organized.

Kristopher Pollard has been working in Development and Membership since 2004. He has grown Milwaukee Film’s Membership program from about 400 members when he began in 2012 to now nearly 5700 (1% of the population of Milwaukee.) He has a weekly segment on WISN Channel 12 called “Flick Picks,” and for the past seven years has also co-hosted Cinebuds, a film podcast, with Radio Milwaukee’s Dori Zori.

A lifelong artist and weirdo, Milan Zori moved to Milwaukee in 2003 with about 12 of his friends and has been paid to be creative for all but one week of his life ever since. He spent some very expensive time at two different colleges, snagged a degree in Advertising & Graphic Design, and went on to work as a designer, copywriter, illustrator, content strategist, marketing manager, and creative director for more clients than he can fully recall. After a seven-year hiatus, he’s returned to Milwaukee Film in an attempt to prove he’s more than just a pretty face.

Kevin Rice joined Milwaukee Film as a seasonal shipping coordinator for the 2017 film festival. Since then, he has served in an increasingly expanding technical role—first as a projectionist when Milwaukee Film began operating the Oriental in 2018, and then as technical director starting in 2019. Prior to Milwaukee Film, Kevin worked as a filmmaker and educator. In 2012, he co-founded a small non-profit called Process Reversal which provides educational and production resources for filmmakers and artists creating films on celluloid. To this day, celluloid and cinema engineering are Kevin’s main passions. His favorite projector is an Eastman 25.

Petey Balestrieri was born and raised on Milwaukee’s east side and has been deeply in love with its local movie theaters for almost 50 years: Touch of Evil at the Paradise, Buck Rogers at the old Avalon, IMAGINE John Lennon at the Downer, Purple Rain at the Times and far, FAR too many magical movie memories to name at his beloved Oriental Theatre! Petey got involved with the Milwaukee Film Festival as a volunteer over ten years ago and still has to pinch himself every time he turns the key in the door. Sharing priceless movie moments with his family & friends in the same spaces he was enraptured in as a child is one of his life’s true joys.

Kerstin Larson has served as the Programming Director at Milwaukee Film since 2022. She first joined the team in a seasonal festival role in 2014 and immediately fell in love with the organization. Kerstin brings experience from her time working for Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival, and the Boca Grande Film Festival. She programs the calendar screen at the Oriental Theatre year round and the genre, American, and international fiction films for the Milwaukee Film Festival. When she isn’t at work, Kerstin and her husband Andy watch even more movies at home in an effort to make their daughter Reese into the world’s youngest cinephile.