Ondi Timoner
President / Festival Director
As the founder of Interloper Films, Timoner has spent more than three decades — 35 years — producing, directing, and editing award-winning documentaries, scripted features, television series, commercials, and music videos. A member of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America, where she chairs the Nonfiction Subcommittee, moderating the Q&As and their podcast, while working on Special Projects. Ondi also hosted the beloved talk show BYOD — Bring Your Own Doc — for 300 episodes. She brings unparalleled industry relationships, and creative leadership to the Joshua Tree International Film Festival.
The destruction of her home and town in January 2025 led Ondi and her wife and composer, Morgan Doctor, to relocate to her favorite retreat, Joshua Tree, where she journeyed with her son and family for the last several decades. Having premiered films at leading festivals across the globe—including Sundance FF, Toronto IFF, Telluride FF, and many others—she brings a deep understanding and expertise of what makes a festival culturally significant, artistically impactful, and globally relevant. Her leadership positions JTIFF at the intersection of world-class cinema, creative community, and the extraordinary landscape of the Mojave Desert.
OUR BOARD
Zack Solomon
Co-Executive Director
Zack Solomon is a film exhibition executive, programmer, and festival operations leader with more than a decade of experience building audiences, cultivating industry partnerships, and creating exceptional theatrical experiences. He currently serves as General Manager and Programmer of Festival Theaters in Palm Springs, the region's only independent first-run arthouse cinema, where he oversees programming, studio and distributor relations, marketing, audience development, technical presentation, finance, staffing, and special events. Through premieres, filmmaker appearances, repertory programming, and community engagement, he is working to establish the theater as a year-round cultural destination.
Previously, Zack spent more than a decade with the Palm Springs International Film Society, advancing through leadership roles in marketing, box office, membership, education, venue management, and festival operations. He served as Venue Operations Manager for the Palm Springs International Film Festival and ShortFest, led the Society's membership and education initiatives, and coordinated studio relations for the Palm Springs International Film Awards. He has also overseen venue operations and large-scale audience experiences at major North American festivals, including Tribeca, the New York Film Festival, DOC NYC, NewFest, the Seattle International Film Festival, and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
Claudia Puig
Director of Programing
Claudia Puig is a nationally recognized film critic, entertainment journalist, and festival curator. She has been Director of Programming for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival since 2021 and is Program Director for the Cascadia International Women's Film Festival. She previously served as Senior Programmer for the AFI Film Festival and has led programming for the Mendocino, Napa Valley, and FilmFest 919 festivals.
Puig was President of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association from 2016 to 2023 and has worked as a speechwriter and consultant for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She spent 15 years as lead movie critic at USA Today and 11 years at the Los Angeles Times, where she contributed to Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, and for 20 years was a critic on NPR's "Film Week." Fluent in Spanish, she holds degrees from UCLA and USC.
Patricia Vernhes
Director of InstituTe Programs
Patricia Vernhes is a multidisciplinary artist and curator with more than two decades of experience developing programs, exhibitions, and partnerships across music, film, and visual arts. In 2024 she founded the Hi-Desert Film Institute in Joshua Tree, a curated screening and discourse program that studies cinema within the desert, treating landscape as both context and conduit. Her work is guided by the belief that cultural programs should function as living ecosystems that connect artists and audiences while balancing tradition with experimentation.
Born in Poland, Vernhes began her career as a major-label recording artist and national radio broadcaster before moving to London, where she studied music, performed solo and with multiple bands, ran a record label and design studio, and collaborated on more than twenty film soundtracks. Since settling in Joshua Tree in 2012, she has explored environment and memory through composition, painting, sculpture, film, and salvage work, and also teaches Hatha yoga, meditation, and sound practice, trained at The Integratron. Drawing on a path spanning Warsaw, London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles, and Joshua Tree, she brings globally engaged, locally resonant leadership to her initiatives.
Matt French
Founding Board Member
Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Matt French relocated to Pioneertown in 2017, where he found the place his heart calls home. Since then, he has fully immersed himself in the desert community, channeling his energy and expertise into ventures that both honor and expand the region’s cultural landscape. Matt serves as owner and partner in several cornerstone desert institutions—including The Pioneertown Motel, Red Dog Saloon, The Copper Room, and Lord Fletchers Inn.
With proven business acumen and an insider’s understanding of the desert’s unique creative ecosystem, Matt has become a trusted steward of its growth and preservation. His ability to merge high-level curation with operational excellence makes him an unparalleled asset in shaping and sustaining large-scale, long-term, and highly complex productions—such as the film festival— while ensuring they remain rooted in the authenticity and spirit of the desert he calls home.
Cheryl Bookout
Founding Board Member
Cheryl Bookout's documentary and producing work reflects an enduring interest in shared stories of resilience and human connection. She directed, wrote, and produced the award-winning short Inside the Beauty Bubble, a story of family, fabulousness, and folk art that shows how the strong people on the margins often hold a community together, and is now completing her feature documentary Moving Like Pond Water, an intimate look at veterans whose creative practices become pathways toward healing and renewed purpose. She is also a producer of Cheri Gaulke's feature documentary Acting Like Women, executive produced by Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner and now on the 2026 festival circuit.
Throughout her career, Bookout has built places where expression, community, and possibility can flourish: founding an artist-run gallery in Pomona, coordinating Judy Chicago's Envisioning the Future, strengthening the Southern California Women's Caucus for Art, and co-founding The Chimaera Project, whose advocacy programs have reached about 1,500 filmmakers. Her nonprofit leadership has been shaped by the Annenberg Foundation's Alchemy program and, in 2023, its Alchemy Tech: Technology for Good cohort. A longtime Joshua Tree resident, she helped FURSTWURLD establish its nonprofit status, serves on the advisory board of the Mil-Tree Veterans Project, and helps steward the Joshua Tree Retreat Center, always working to help meaningful ideas survive and thrive.