Vancouver Foreign Film Society
Our Present Board of Directors and Volunteers
Vancouver Foreign Film Society has always relied on our volunteers and Board members to assist with ticket sales, memberships, social media and our private film club screenings.
We are always happy to provide our board and volunteers with complimentary Private Film Club Membership and other perks at festivals including complimentary tickets when available
We greatly appreciate all our current and past board members and volunteers over the past 12 years
Ian Merkel -President and Co-Founder, Administrator of our society formed in 2014.
Ian, born in South Africa. was always interested in foreign international films and joined a film society in his early career as a C.P.A . He emigrated to Canada in 1975 and attended The international film festival at the Varsity and Dunbar theatres in the early 80’s prior to VIFF in 1986…In 2000 he joined the board of VJFF on the screening committee ending a 10 year career as Executive Director in 2009… In 2010 he he curated the first 2 years of The South African Film Festival and remains a sponsor to this day… In 2012 he joined the board of Reel Causes and remained Treasurer/VP until 2017
Birgit Westergaard – Board Director, Former Vice president and Co-Founder of our society.
Devon Kular – Website Maintenance and Design, and Co-Signor
Devon is a regular attendee at many of Vancouver’s local film festivals and has had a passion for cinema since his youth. He watches over 200 films each year, loves to catch screenings at his local theatre on fifth avenue, and always has tabs on what our local independent cinemas are showing on the big screen.
Devon became involved with the Vancouver Foreign film society by doing what he loves, attending a film festival and chatting with the stranger sitting next to him, who by chance turned out to be Ian Merkel.
Ronen Leibman – Film Reviewer and Screening Administrator, Social Media and Co-Signor.
Ronen Leibman, born in Israel, studied cinema and art in England, and now resides in Vancouver, is a video artist, curator, lecturer, and writer about film, new media, art, and everything in between.
Anne Breaky – Film Reviewer
I have experience with varying degrees with the Spark Animation festival, Bermuda Film festival and Vancouver film festival. I strive to keep my perspective mainly from the audience’s point of view rather than industry’s.
Tom Konyves – Film Reviewer
Tom Konyves is a poet, essayist, curator and videopoetry theorist. His career began in Montreal in the late 1970s, when he joined one of Canada’s first artist-run centres, Vehicule Art, where he was instrumental in the forming of the seven Vehicule Poets.
Having coined the term videopoetry in 1978, Tom Konyves is considered to be “one of the original pioneers of the form”. In 2011, he published the ground-breaking Videopoetry: A Manifesto, a “definitive guide” which to date has garnered more than 30,000 views from 68 countries. He is the author of eight books of poetry and a surrealist novella.
Jordan Macken – Film Reviewer
Jordan is a filmmaker based in Vancouver. His documentary Raising Ava Rose, about raising a child with Down Syndrome, premiered at the Academy Award-qualifying Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia. Lay Me By the Shore & Metamorphypus which Jordan Art-directed premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal.
His work on TV series includes HBO’s The Last of Us, AppleTV’s Pachinko, and NETFLIX’s The Haunting of Bly Manor, Snowpiercer, Altered Carbon, and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
Arash Taheri – Board Director, and Previous Film Reviewer
He also assisted with organizing the other board members reviews and promoting some of the sponsored films. Arash was offered a full management position in Toronto and physically moved in early 2025. He remains on the board and is part of our Private Film Club. Like myself he has been screening films for TIFF while I have done the same for VIFF. We continue to discuss many of the films that are in each of our festivals.
Mike Archibald – Our Guest Reviewer over the past 2 years
Mike is a writer, educated at Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, and based in Vancouver. His work has appeared in Cinema Scope, Offscreen, MUBI’s Notebook, and other publications. He lectures on cinema for VIFF’s year-round series, including Pantheon and Film Studies.