| Ben Thompson - Programming Director / Film Coordinator |
Ben Thompson joins the Long Island Wine Country Film Festival having worked as a film coordinator and submissions reviewer for the Tribeca Film Festival for the past 4 years. He is a working filmmaker and divides his time between productions in New York and London. Ben has always had a tremendous passion for film making and drama and first began directing in the theater with his play The Waiting Game at the Rosemary Branch Theater in London in 1998. Since then he has directed and produced dozens of short films and documentaries in the last few years. He was also recently a finalist at Tropfest with his film Lemon & Lime and short-listed for the BAFTA 60 second film competition. He has previously produced and programmed a film event for the Welsh Assembly Government as part of Wales Week in New York.
| Briege McGarrity - Publicist and Event Planner |
Briege McGarrity is a publicist and event planner and who has worked in the entertainment business for nine years. She started her career as a hospitality coordinator for the prestigious Cinemagic World Screen Festival for Young People and Foyle Film Festival. Briege has designed and implemented over 30 Film PR campaigns on both coasts, produced red carpet premieres, industry panels, award shows and coordinated award evaluation for more than 5,000 film entries. Briege has also written several articles for Independent Film Quarterly, a magazine for film buffs and industry professionals.
In 2006, she became a partner in Independent Film Group, a full-service agency dedicated to helping independent filmmakers achieve the highest level of success with their projects. Briege has also expanded into product PR where she represents clients in the hair, beauty and herbal industry. She holds an honors degree in Communications and an M Phil degree in Sociolinguistics.
With multiple academic degrees, Lana Parshina initially worked as a Russian/English/German interpreter, a freelance journalist, and a public relations consultant/crisis manager. But, films and filmmaking was her passion and she left a vibrant career in crisis management to embrace her dream. Having produced several independent films in New York, she recently joined efforts with a few LA based companies and investors to produce high quality films with budgets ranging from $2.5M to $10M. One of the projects in development, a romantic comedy titled "The Wine Affair", is going to be shot in Long Island Wine Country and Tuscany. It was when she did location scouting for "The Wine Affair" in Long Island, she fell in love with the beauty of Long Island Wine Country region and wanted to give something back in return. Having experience in film production and film festival/events production, she teamed up with Martha Clara Vineyard and Cinderella Travel to start a tradition of Long Island Wine Country Film Festival. Lana Parshina resides in New York, but currently splits her time between New York and Los Angeles.
| Natalie Azarov - Founding Sponsor / Chief Coordinator |
Natalie Azarov always had passion for wineries in particular and fine living in general. Natalie has visited vineyards in Burgundy, Toscany, Israel and California. She empbaced her passion by starting a travel business that would accomodate and fulfill her clients needs to enjoy fine living while traveling for business or pleasure. Natalie Azarov is the president of three companies, American Educational Processing center Inc., Cinderella Travel Corp and American Getaways. The first two companies were established in 1995 under the premise of providing corporate as well as leisure travel services. Cinderella Travel Corp. specializes in travel arrangements to all CIS countries, including visas, airtickets, accommodations, tours, translations as well as all others travel services.
AEPC Inc. specializes in arranging business trips to the United States for businessmen and businesswomen from Russia. AEPC Inc. is responsible for introducing company representatives and executives from more then 250 corporations to innovative technologies, state of the art equipment as well as to American management practices.
American Getaways specializes in serving luxury markets and arranging trips to destinations within USA.
