Bears Rebecca Fonté is the Founder and Artistic Director of OTHER WORLDS FILM FESTIVAL, the top SciFi-focused film festival in America. From 2012-2014, she served as the Director of Programming for AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL, overseeing some 200 films selected to screen at eight venues over eight days. The 2013 AFF saw 28 world premiere features and 7 films picked up at the festival or the week after.  She programs the midnighters for San Francisco IndieFest, and has consulted on the launch of five film festivals, including the intimate ALEXANDER VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL and million-dollar-plus budgeted GREENWICH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. Bears was one of the producers on the Sundance Jury Award-winning short film THE PROCEDURE, which played over 100 festivals in a year and was a Vimeo Staff Premiere. Her own shorts, CONVERSION THERAPIST, PRENATAL, ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE and THE SECRET KEEPER, have been selected at over 200 different festivals including Fantasia, Phoenix Film Festival, SciFi London, Lund International Fantastisk Filmfestival, Shriekfest, and Dances With Films. Vicious Circle Films released her feature thriller iCRIME, on DVD, VOD and streaming in 2011. Bears also self-produced two web-series which have been seen by a combined ten million viewers. She serves on the Arts Commission for the city of Austin representing District 6 and is a board member for aGLIFF, the longest running LGBTQ festival in Southwest. Prior to arriving in Austin, Bears wrote coverage for independent producers and coverage services in LA and placed in nearly every single screenwriting contest out there including Screenwriter’s Expo, Final Draft Big Break, Page International, Story Pros and Austin Film Festival. Bears received her BA from Carleton College in British Studies and Theatre Studies and a MFA in Directing from Indiana University and has directed over forty plays, including the Austin Critics Table nominee Corpus Christi, and the Austin Shakespeare Festival's Complete Works of Shakspeare Abridged. She studied writing with noted playwrights Jeff Hatcher and Denis Reardon, and directed the first-ever professional productions by Princess Grace Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Don Zolidis and up-and-coming playwright Itamar Moses. 

For better or for worse, much of Jordan's social conditioning has come through constant movie-watching.  Whether this makes her a total couch potato or a cinema patron sensitive to the lives of others (maybe both?), she's made it her mission to share the love through carefully selected films.  Currently this means helping steer Other Worlds Austin toward its rightful throne of premier SciFi film festival in the nation (it's gonna happen, ya'll.)  She also acts as Assistant Director for Duluth-Superior Film Festival, a boutique fest in her northern MN hometown that she's particularly proud of.  Since graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in film and literature, Jordan has worked with various arts and film offices including Women In Film Los Angeles.  As for film festivals, she's fortunate to count Sundance, Tribeca, and Telluride among her experiences, as well as a stint with the programming department of the Austin Film Festival here in town.