Proven Success
Our team has a history of delivering successful micro-budget projects and boasts valuable partnerships within the independent film community.
Jill is an award-winning Los Angeles producer/writer/actor dedicated to creating opportunities for underrepresented filmmakers. She also really loves cats, poker, and traveling the world with her amazing wife.
Her viral hit We’re Getting Nowhere, regarded by the press as “the video blog that started it all” for LGBTQ new media, led to a development deal with Viacom and a string of roles in television and film. In addition to serving on the Screen Actor’s Guild LGBTQ National Board, she has spoken on LGBTQ media issues in over two dozen cities worldwide, including on the mainstages at San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Munich Gay Pride.
Jill Bennett: Program Director
Her producing experience ranges from charity events to live specials, theatre, radio, new media, and film. She has produced three award-winning micro-budget projects that played in the international film festival circuit and went on to acquire worldwide distribution.
Jill’s comedy series Second Shot won picture of the year at London’s LFest. She won two Audience Choice Awards at Logo's NewNowNext Awards, and three Curve Magazine Awards for her two-season ensemble comedy We Have to Stop Now. Her most recent feature, Under the Influencer, is due to hit the film festival circuit in 2024.
Keisha Zollar: Creative Producer & Director
Her acting credits include Orange is the New Black, Women Who Kill, Comedy Central’s Snapchat Series, Nightcap on PopTV, Middle of the Night, The Today Show, CollegeHumor, TVLand, Funny or Die, IAF.tv, Above Average, MSNBC, MTV, UCBComedy, and HBO’s Divorce starring Sarah Jessica Parker.
She is an alumni of the Writer’s Guild of America’s Showrunner Program, and a recipient of the Inevitable Foundation’s Caring Across Generations Award. She co-hosts a podcast with her husband Andrew Kimler – Applying It Liberally - that can be found on iTunes.
Keisha Zollar is a disabled comedian, writer, showrunner, and Sundance fellow. She is a founding member of Upright Citizen Brigade Theatre's first all-black team Astronomy Club and was co-head writer for the group's Netflix series Astronomy Club: The Sketch Show.
She worked on Hulu's limited Mike Tyson series Mike, Young Love (adapted from the Oscar winning short, Hair Love), two seasons of the Spitting Image reboot for BritBox, and Netflix's animated series Agent Elvis. Zollar was on the writing staff of Busy Tonight, and The Opposition with Jordan Klepper. Currently, she voices Susan Shephard on the second and third season of Stephen Colbert Presents: Tooning Out The News on Comedy Central.
Jillian Armenante:
Creative Producer & Director
She executive produced, wrote, directed and acted in the original series Kittens in a Cage which was selected for the New York Television Festival and received a Best Feature Award from NewFilmmakers LA. Kittens has won a multitude of awards: Temecula Independent Film Festival - Best Comedy Feature & Top 5 of Festival, IndieFest Film Awards: Award of Excellence, LA Spotlight Film Festival: Best FeatureFilm, LA Comedy Festival: Best Feature and Best Ensemble, Grand Prize, Best Comedy Feature Official Selections of NewFilmmakersNY, Downtown Film Fest LA, Independent Filmmakers Showcase and many more.
Jillian is a Director/ Actor/ Producer/ Writer who was named Best Director by the prestigious NewFilmmakers LA. She is a member of the Alliance of Women Directors SAG/AFTRA and the Producer’s Guild of America. Jillian was named Top 100 New Media Content Creators by the New Media Film Festival.
She produced and directed the comedy Stuck starring Heather Matarazzo, Joel McHale, Felicia Day. Winner: Best Director Lady Filmmakers Film Fest and Best Comedy Feature and Best Director Artemis Film Fest. She produced the feature film Dark Harbor with Jessica Sipos, and Xander Berkeley, an official selection of the Catalina Film Fest and the Pasadena International Film Fest.
Lauren Neal is a multi-hyphenate filmmaker, data scientist, and AI/ML engineer. She is a graduate of Brown University’s Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies and the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science, where she studied applications of machine learning to filmmaking.
Lauren was nominated for Best Lead Actress at IFF London for her work in The Lovely Rejects, which she also co-produced. Her acting credits include Westworld, FOX’s unaired pilot Delirium, and indie feature The Sympathy Card. Lauren won Best Guest Actor (Comedy) at the Hollyweb Festival for her turn in the web series Those With Class.
Notoriously obsessed with the discipline of acting, Lauren is the resident data scientist at Castability, a start-up devoted to providing actors with actionable feedback and quantitative analysis of their work.
Lauren has edited, produced, and directed for several political campaigns. She also won the Hyundai Emerging Director Award at Outfest Fusion 2020–Hyundai then enlisted Lauren to direct a commercial that aired during the GLAAD Awards, OutFronts, and Outfest LA. In 2023, Lauren was named a Commercial Directors Diversity Program semifinalist. Her work often interfaces directly with nascent technologies and mental health matters: where neural networks meet neurodivergence meets NeRFs.
A graduate of Warner Bros. Discovery’s inaugural VFX Coordinator training program and current employee of Ingenuity Studios / Ghost VFX, Lauren is editing two documentary projects and has been tapped by Story Mill Entertainment to direct the forthcoming romantic comedy Ex Life.
Lauren Neal: Post Producer & Director
Originally from Kissimmee, Florida, Evan starred on Broadway as Gerry Goffin in Beautiful the Carole King Musical and was recurring on the TV show Jane the Virgin.
Evan attended OCSA before finishing high school at UNCSA, studied Shakespeare at LAMDA, and got his BFA from Juilliard. He produced and originated the role of Kurt Kelly in Heathers the Musical before starring in and producing the award winning film 4th Man Out.
Other credits include Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, Switched at Birth, Liv and Maddie and The Blindspot. He also co-founded StArt and artsINSIDEOUT: empowerment programs benefiting students in Kissimmee, FL and children affected by HIV in South Africa.
Evan is a Tony nominated producer for the revival of Spring Awakening.
Evan Todd: Associate Creative Producer
Rachael Hasting Adair: Technical Advisor
A true technical Swiss Army knife on set, Rachael has worked in the camera departments and grip/electric departments for Hallmark Channel, Travel Channel, Netflix, Yahoo, HGTV, Firefox, Disney Channel, Facebook TV, All BLK network, Adidas, Speedo, Hydroflask, Qualcomm, Intel, United, Chase, Blue Shield, amongst many others.
After film school, she focused on cinematography, spending 15 years as a Producer/Shooter worldwide for non-profits, and was recently selected for the ASC Vision Mentorship program with legendary cinematography mentor Polly Morgan.