October 14, 2010
The New York Times, 15th Floor Conference Center

 Presented in partnership with VOCES, Latino Heritage Network of the New York Times Company

Sebastián Silva (born in Santiago Chile in 1979) is a multifaceted artist whose body of work includes painting, illustration and popular music. After graduating from Catholic school in Santiago, Silva studied filmmaking at the Escuela de Cine de Chile for a year before leaving to study animation in Montreal. While seeking out a living selling shoes, Silva mounted the first gallery exhibition of his illustrations and started his band CHC who have since gone on to record three albums. Silva's second illustration show brought him in contact with Hollywood but a frustrating period in Los Angeles spent pitching to Steven Spielberg and others netted no tangible results. Fleeing Hollywood, Silva initiated two more musical projects, "Yaia" and "Los Mono", both picked up for distribution by Sonic360 and released in the US and the UK, and exhibited his art work in New York while writing the script for what would become his first feature La Vida me mata. Back in Chile, Silva recorded a solo album and directed La Vida me mata. Released in 2007, the film was a critical success, garnering multiple awards including Best Film from the Chilean Critics Circle. Setting aside a script based on his disastrous trip to Hollywood, Silva wrote and directed La nana / The Maid in February of 2008. His second feature film won numerous prizes internationally including the 2009 Sundance Film Festival's World Cinema Jury Prize Dramatic and World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Acting, and was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award as Best Foreign Language Film. His new film Gatos viejos / Old Cats (co-directed with Pedro Peirano) just had its World premiere in the 48th edition of the New York Film Festival.

Dennis Lim is a New York based critic and editor. He is the founding editor of Moving Image Source, the online publication and research resource of the Museum of the Moving Image. He writes regularly for The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, and was a film critic at The Village Voice from 1998 to 2006, as well as its film editor from 2000 to 2006. He is also the editor of The Village Voice Film Guide (Wiley, 2006). A member of the National Society of Film Critics, he is currently a member of the New York Film Festival selection committee and he teaches in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism graduate program at New York University.