Franconia 5 Minute Film Fest

Juror Bios

Sequoia Hauck is a queer multidisciplinary artist in the Twin Cities focused on creating theater, film, poetry, and performance art that decolonizes the process of art-making, focusing on identity as well as relationships with their ancestors and future generations. Sequoia’s family is from the White Earth Nation and the Hoopa Valley. They grew up in Mni Sota Makoce (Minnesota) in what is now the Twin Cities. They have seen firsthand how art has the ability to inspire, connect, and build a sense of community. Sequoia enjoys dabbling in many aspects of performance/theater as a stage manager, house manager, producer, director, curator, playwright, and performer. Sequoia has worked on and offstage with organizations such as Aniccha Arts, Art Shanty Projects, Exposed Brick Theatre, Māoriland Film Festival, Pangea World Theater, Patrick’s Cabaret, Poetry and Pie, The Southern Theater, and Turtle Theater Collective.

Ryan Stopera is a mixed race, Chinese American, award-winning writer, director, photographer, producer and educator based in Minneapolis. A self taught artist, Ryan began his career working with individuals experiencing homelessness, children and families, and foster care youth, as well as in program development and affordable housing development. Working in community, creating connections, and sharing stories with each other is what drives Ryan’s work. He has exhibited work at The Minnesota Museum of American Art, SOO Visual Arts Center, Gamut Gallery, Indigenous Roots Cultural Art Center, Third Place Gallery, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Ryan’s films have been screened across the country and the world. He’s the recipient of the 2018 Artist Neighborhood Partnership with CURA at the University of Minnesota, the 2019 MN State Arts Board Cultural Community Partnership Grant, the 2021 and 2022 MSAB Artist Initiative Grant, he was a 2020 Creative Community Fellow with National Art Strategies, and his film serenity won the Audience Award at the 2023 Twin Cities Film Fest. 

Merit Thursday is an experimental animator, video artist, textile artist, and puppeteer. His process is highly material-based, and he is fascinated by the human body. As a transsexual queer man, Thursday’s works also focus on queer desire, the queer fascination with artifice and fabrication, and the natural/unnatural forces that shape us.