We are thrilled to announce that Tyler Davidson, award-winning independent producer and President of Low Spark Entertainment, will kick off the 78th University Film & Video Association Conference with an inspiring keynote address on July 30th, 2024.
Keynote Address: Decentralizing Hollywood: Film Production Outside the System
Tyler Davidson is an award-winning independent film producer, and the president of Low Spark Entertainment, a Los Angeles and Cleveland, Ohio based production and finance company that manages both Low Spark Films and Low Spark Television.
In recent years, Davidson has brought eight acclaimed features to the Sundance Film Festival, including this past year’s Independent Spirt winning and Gotham Award nominated hit Emily the Criminal, starring Aubrey Plaza and Theo Rossi, and written and directed by John Patton Ford. Davidson also recently produced Dash Shaw’s Independent Spirit Award nominated animated fantasy Cryptozoo; Jeff Brown’s horror-thriller The Beach House; and Mélanie Laurent’s Galveston, based on Nic Pizzolatto’s novel, and starring Ben Foster and Elle Fanning.
Davidson also produced Jeff Nichol’s breakthrough feature Take Shelter, which was nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards and won the Cannes Film Festival Critics’ Week Grand Prix; Craig Zobel’s Compliance; William Eubank’s The Signal; The Kings of Summer, written by Chris Galletta and directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts; Steven Caple, Jr.’s The Land; Sophie Goodhart’s My Blind Brother; and served as executive producer on Dash Shaw’s My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea. Davidson has worked with distributors including Focus, Sony Pictures Classics, IFC, Roadside Attractions, Universal, Netflix, Magnolia, Oscilloscope, Starz, RLJ, CBS Films, and Shudder, and is a longstanding member of the Producer’s Guild.
The 78th Annual University Film and Video Association Conference will be a four-day, in-person event hosted by the School of Film & Media Arts at Cleveland State University from July 30 to August 2, 2024. This year’s conference theme is Rock On: Urban Resilience, Cinema, and Sustainability. Submissions for the conference close on March 15th, 2024.