Director Biography – Tonia Kempler (LEORA)

Tonia Kempler lives in New York, though her roots run deep in a rural south still steeped in the occult traditions of the Gullah Geechee and the animism of the Cherokees. Surrounded and empowered by the lore and practices of these supernatural cultures, Tonia leans toward macabre worlds with isolated, damaged, and yet intensely capable and empathic female leads. This personal connection drives her concentration on Supernatural Horror/Thrillers, including features, pilots, shorts and podcasts.

Her approach to storytelling and understanding audience engagement is fortified by a career in the Music Industry, including concert production and managing Grammy Award-winning producers, engineers and songwriters.

Tonia’s undergraduate degree in Humanities with a minor in Fine Art from Oglethorpe University is supplemented by continuing education at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, The New York Academy of Art in New York, NYU, The New York Screenwriters Lab with Dylan Gary, The Academy of Film Writing with Max Adams, Gotham Writers and Story Farm with Max Timm. She currently works with mentors and takes classes through Roadmap Writers.

By femalefilmfestival

The irony of this festival is that its goal is to not be around in 5 years time. To eventually not be relevant because there is zero need to have a festival geared for female talent and female stories because the stories presented in Hollywood and around the world are a balanced showcase of the human experience from both sexes. Our goal is to achieve a lot of success and then fold into oblivion simply because there is no need for this festival. This festival was created by the FEEDBACK Film & Writing Festival as a simple reaction to a strong need to showcase female talent from around the world in a more profound way. When putting together the weekly festival, the administration noticed a lack of a female presence in the stories being shown at the festival. A classic example and analogy to the frustration is how the festival noticed that even the smaller roles in a screenplay were written for a man to play. There was zero reason for this in many stories. How a police officer, or a political campaign manager, for example with 3-4 lines in a screenplay was a "HE" character. Why? And these are the screenplays written by the winners! The talented one who have obtained agents and have began/beginning their careers as a writer.

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