UWAA Movie Night: Singles

Mal Ahern — Assistant professor, UW Department of Cinema & Media Studies

Mal Ahern is a historian of media technology who has published essays on topics ranging from air conditioning to art conservation, from early cinema to the printer’s errors. Her research has won several awards, including a year-long fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Her academic writing has appeared in the journals diacritics, NECSUS, and Discourse; she has also published several short articles and reviews in outlets such as The New Inquiry and The Nation. At UW, she has taught courses such as “Glitch Aesthetics,” “Feminist Approaches to Media,” “What is the Digital?” and “The Copy.” Apart from her teaching and academic scholarship, she is a passionate defender of the romantic comedy; in 2016 she co-curated a film series on the genre at Brooklyn Academy of Music Cinematek in Brooklyn, NY.

Warren Etheredge — Producer, playwright, author and teaching associate

Warren Etheredge is a Storyfinder™, a successful producer, published author, staged playwright, veteran festival programmer and much sought-after public speaker. He has conducted over 3,500 interviews. He recently wrote and produced the feature doc, DOWNWIND (d. Mark Shapiro, Douglas Brian Miller), narrated by Martin Sheen which premiered at Slamdance 2023. Other producer credits include PERSONHOOD (d. Jo Ardinger), FUREVER (d. Amy Finkel), ALL OF THEM (d. Sylvia Sichel), THE PHANTOM 52 (d. Geoff Marslett), LAST REQUESTS (d. Courtenay Johnson), THE LOST MARINER (d. Tess Martin), EVEN THE WALLS (d. Saman Maydani & Sarah Kuck), EVERY BEAUTIFUL THING (d. Sonya Lea) and the webseries, THE ENCHANTED KITCHEN w/Sasha Graham. He teaches screenwriting/filmmaking at the University of Washington and Cornish College for the Arts. He is one of the founding faculty of The Red Badge Project, teaching combat veterans storytelling skills to cope with PTS. He has hosted multiple television series including the Emmy®-nominated The High Bar. He served as the VP of Curation & Acquisitions for Tom Skerritt’s start-up, Triple Squirrels Media. He is the Co-founder/Curator for the Walla Walla Movie Crush, shorts programmer for The Seattle Jewish Film Festival and lead programmer for the Summer Shorts Film Festival.

Tom Mara — SIFF executive director

Tom Mara, ’88, is a long-time champion for the Seattle arts community, a cause he has been advocating for for the past 35 years. Mara joined SIFF in August 2022, after serving as executive director at KEXP since 2000. Over the past two years Mara has led SIFF on a trajectory for growth and expansion, most notably through the acquisition and reopening of the former Seattle Cinerama theater, now SIFF Cinema Downtown. Tom’s extensive fundraising and nonprofit leadership experience is invaluable to the ongoing success of SIFF and its role in ensuring a thriving Seattle film ecosystem for filmmakers and film lovers alike.

Golden Owens (moderator) — Assistant professor, UW Department of Cinema & Media Studies

Golden M. Owens explores and teaches about representations of race and gender, artificial intelligence, haunting, popular culture, and racialized sounds and voices. Her current book project examines intelligent virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana, contending that these aides evoke and are haunted by Black women slaves, servants, and houseworkers in the United States. The project demonstrates this haunting through analyzing popular 20th and 21st-century media depictions of Black female domestic workers, robotic and/or artificially intelligent servants/helpers, labor-saving products and devices, and contemporary virtual aides.

Dr. Owens’ work appears in Sounding Out! and has been accepted by the Journal for Cinema and Media Studies. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation (via the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine), the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (f.k.a. the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation), the Social Science Research Council, the Mellon Foundation, Northwestern University’s Office of Fellowships, and Northwestern University’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.

Eva Walker — KEXP DJ and author

Eva Walker is a radio DJ and host of the Early Show on the popular Seattle radio station, KEXP. A co-founder of the rock band, The Black Tones, with her twin brother, the group has garnered major accolades, including being named one of the 15 groups redefining the city’s sound by NPR. The Black Tones have opened Weezer, Death Cab for Cutie, Mavis Staples and Fishbone; has worked with members of Pearl Jam; and partnered with the Seattle Sounders FC, launching the club’s Jimi Hendrix-inspired jersey kit. More recently, the Black Tones released music on Sub Pop Records as part of the label’s Singles Club. Walker was featured in music videos for local Grammy-nominated artists, ODESZA and Macklemore, and she helped produce the BBC’s the Arts Hour on Tour event in Seattle. In addition to her work at KEXP, Eva is a monthly columnist for the local paper The Stranger where she writes Dear Hendrix letters to her daughter about sharing wisdom learned from her experiences and her mistakes.