The inaugural Outrate Online Short Film Festival has been blessed with a stellar judging panel of film makers, film academics and cultural commentators from all over the world.

If your work progresses to the finals (which eleven films will), the judges will view your work, appraise it and provide you with written feedback.

Our judging panel is made up a very accomplished group of professionals, and they're all looking forward to seeing your work. We're thrilled to have them on board, and thank them for their generous support.

Monika Treut
Monika Treut was born in Mönchengladbach, Germany, on April 6, 1954. She studied literature and politics at Philipps-University, Marburg. In the mid-seventies she began working with video. Her PhD thesis: "The Cruel Woman. Female Images in the Writing of Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch" was published in Germany, Switzerland and Austria in 1984.

In the mid-eighties Treut started to write, direct and produce award-winning independent features and documentaries which screened at numerous film festivals throughout the world and enjoy international distribution. Retrospectives have been held in Mexico City, Sao Paolo, Taipeh, Toronto, Cambridge, Helsinki, Thessaloniki, Los Angeles and Lisbon. Treut's first feature, co-directed with Elfi Mikesch, was the controversial "Seduction:The Cruel Woman",1985, which since has become a cult classic. The black and white coming-out tale "Virgin Machine" followed in 1988. "My Father Is Coming", a comedy of manners set in New York, was released in 1991. In 1992 Treut began directing documentaries: "Female Misbehavior", four portraits of "bad girls", among them Camille Paglia; "Didn`t Do It For Love" in 1997, a portrait of Norwegian-born Eva Norvind, B-movie star in Mexico, later dominatrix in New York; a group portrait of transgendered cyborgs in San Francisco "Gendernauts" in 1999; and, most recently, Treut completed "Warrior of Light", on Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, an internationally renown artist and human rights activist who works with endangered children in the streets and slums of Rio de Janeiro.

Since 1990 Treut has also been teaching and lecturing at Colleges (Vassar, Hollins, Dartmouth), Art Institutes (SFAI) and Universities (UIC, UCSD) in the U.S. Treut runs the independent film production company, Hyena Films, with offices in Hamburg, Germany.

John Calendo
John Calendo is the editor of the adult blogzine, Nightcharm. Over the years, he has worked as an editor for Interview, Playboy, Blueboy and Hustler.

John was discovered by Andy Warhol when he was a go-go boy at a notorious sex-club, The Anvil, in the Meat Packing district of Manhattan. As it turned out, John was actually an NYU undergrad moonlighting on weekends and Warhol invited him to join the staff of his fledgling pop-culture magazine, Interview.

Now a 30-year veteran of the magazine business, John’s work has appeared in Esquire, Playboy, The New York Observer, L.A. Fashion Weekly, and Playgirl, among others. He likes to say that he saw the entire country courtesy of men’s magazines, living in Chicago, Las Vegas, Miami and Hollywood.

He is best known, perhaps, for a culty gay magazine he created in Hollywood called In Touch. John was among the first to put his real name on a gay publication. In Touch combined humor, pop culture and big dicks in one glossy little package, and in many ways heralded the blogzine Nightcharm, which John has edited since 2005.

His writings appear there on a daily basis. A selection of his movie essays can be found here.

Jaap Kooijman
Jaap Kooijman (Amsterdam 1967) is Assistant Professor at the Media and Culture (formerly Film and Television Studies) department of the Universiteit van Amsterdam.

He studied English Language and Literature and American Studies at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, including a minor in Humanities at the University of Minnesota. From 1994 to 1998, he worked as a research assistant at the Roosevelt Study Center in Middelburg, the Netherlands. In 1999, he received his PhD in American Studies at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, based on the book And the Pursuit of National Health: The Incremental Strategy Towards National Health Insurance in the United States of America (Amsterdam / Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1999).

His specializations include American popular culture within a global context and Americanization. He is currently working on a project concerning how images of “America” are appropriated in European and Dutch cultural production, and on a study of the image of Diana Ross and the Supremes. His essays on American politics and popular culture have been published in The Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Velvet Light Trap, Post Script, and The European Journal of Cultural Studies.

Glyn Davis
Glyn Davis is a Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Bristol.

He is the author of a book on 'Queer as Folk' (London: BFI,
2007), and of a monograph on Todd Haynes' film 'Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story' (London: Wallflower, 2008). He is presently co-editing, with Gary Needham, a collection entitled 'Queer TV'.


Katrina Douglas
Katrina has directed, tutored and worked for numerous companies around Australia including Sydney Theatre Company, NIDA, VCA, Griffin Theatre Company, the NSW Performing Arts Unit, St Martins Theatre, Shopfront Theatre for Young People, ATYP, PACT, and Powerhouse Youth Theatre (PYT) where she was the Artistic Director/EO from Feb 2001 to June 2005.

Katrina's film and television credits include co-producer of After Hours for Jabiru Town Council NT, co-producer & director Building Healthy Relationships for Junction Works INC, director Lifefore Education Video, director In The Swim (a co-production with Porchlight Productions, SBS and the NSW Film & Television Office 2001 - screening February 16 2002).

A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Katrina is currently the Project Manager for the Play Now Act Now Festival at Metro Screen, NSW Editor for Lowdown Youth Arts Magazine, and currently works for Sydney's ever-popular Moonlight Cinema.