Executive Director Emily Laurance founded the Cleveland Silent Film Festival to bring Northeast Ohio the best silent cinema combined with the highest quality of live musical accompaniment. Both musician and scholar, she has served on the faculties of Oberlin Conservatory, the San Francisco Conservatory, Duke University, and UNC-Chapel Hill. Emily is the former Principal Harpist with the Stockton (CA) Symphony Orchestra and regularly performs with professional orchestras in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Emily has served as Editor of the American Harp Journal since 2018; she holds degrees from the Oberlin and New England Conservatories and a doctorate from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Caroline Breder-Watts has studied, written about and lectured on film throughout her life. She has served on juries for film festivals and created and hosted programs for festivals, arts venues, and social service organizations, including the Columbus Moving Picture Show in Columbus, Ohio (for whom she produces a monthly podcast), the Riverrun International Film Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival, the Humphrey Bogart Film Festival in Key Largo and the Mental Health Association of Palm Beach County. Caroline is the host of WLRN’s Saturday Night at the Movies and the host and producer of Listening to Movies, a radio program on film soundtracks that airs on stations in Cleveland, Ohio and Brooklyn, New York, and hosts a monthly online movie discussion group. To learn more, visit radioonthelaketheatre.org.

David S. Cohen is an award-winning writer, editor and video producer. He is the author of six books on films and filmmaking, including the acclaimed “Screen Plays,” a deep dive into how scripts get written, as well as making-of books on “Rango,” “Pacific Rim” and other films. His byline has appeared in magazines and newspapers around the world. As a Variety staff reporter and editor, he spearheaded the trade’s coverage of the digital revolution in Hollywood. He has won Southern California Journalism Awards for print reporting and as a producer of Variety’s “Artisans” video series.

Ygal created and curates the screening series, Community Movie Night with Ygal Kaufman (CMNYK), which has been running weekly at the Darkside Cinema in Corvallis, Oregon (and online), since 2014. His screenings are steeped in cinematic history, featuring newsreels, cartoons, interviews, commercials, oddities, ephemera and other treats from the past. He also screens silent films with live music, featuring Sonochromatic, Corvallis’ renowned silent film accompanists. Ygal has a bachelor's degree in film production from Penn State University and a master's degree in Journalism from University of Oklahoma and currently works as a multimedia journalist at Ideastream Public Media, in Cleveland, creating stories for web, radio and TV. Ygal also curates and co-hosts the Ideastream Public Media Passport Movie Club, which screens classic films monthly live at Playhouse Square and online.

Kally Mavromatis is a writer and mobile/web developer. She has written about silent movies on her website, WelcomeTosilentMovies.com, since 1995, as well as writing silent star biographies and articles on silent films for other websites around the world. She has also written for and worked on websites for Akron Art Museum, SummaCare, GE, FedEx Custom Critical, Cleveland Clinic, PRC-Saltillo, and others. She is the author of “Akron Churches: Early Architecture,” a look at Akron’s history as seen through its ecclesiastical architecture. She is married and lives with her husband in Shaker Heights.