Habiba Boumlik, the founder and co-curator of NYFAF, is professor at CUNY LaGuardia Community College and a scholar of Amazigh cinema. Her original aim was to bring visibility to the Amazigh communities and cultures in North Africa and the diaspora through films. NYFAF has now grown from bridging encounters between LaGuardia students, filmmakers, scholars, artists and the large New York City audiences, to creating a space for transnational Amazigh voices to connect through film.  

Professor Boumlik has presented her research at national and international conferences. Her presentations have explored themes of diasporic Amazigh film, transnational identities, and the role of film festivals in preserving cultural heritage.

Her recent publications on Amazigh cinema include: "Global Trajectories, Localized Stories: Amazigh Filmmaking through the Eyes of Selected Filmmakers" in Amazigh Cinema: An Introduction to North African Indigenous Film (2025); "Journeys of Discovery: The Case of the New York Forum of Amazigh Film" in African Film Festivals and Transnational Flows of Living Cultural Heritage (2025); and "Indigeneity and Identity Transmission: Amazigh Cultural Expression through Film" in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Muslims and Popular Culture (2023). 

Through her scholarship and curatorial role, Professor Boumlik continues to advocate for Amazigh cinematic production and the recognition of Amazigh cinema, a vital form of cultural preservation. 

Dr. Lucy R. McNair is a translator and Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, The City University of New York, where she co-leads a faculty seminar on Language Across the Curriculum and co-curates the New York Forum of Amazigh Film. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and a M.A. in Modern Languages. Her literary translations and scholarship focus on francophone North Africa and its diaspora, including Amazigh literature and film. Her literary translations include Mouloud Feraoun’s Algerian classic, The Poor Man’s Son (University of Virginia Press, 2005), Moroccan writer Edmond Amran El Maleh’s short story, “Taksiat,” (Poems for the Millennium, Volume Four, University of California Press, 2012), and poetry by Andrée Chedid, Venus Khoury-Ghata and Amina Said (The Poetry of Arab Women, Interlink Publishing Group, 2000). She contributed translations to SOUFFLES-ANFAS: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics (Stanford University Press, 2015) and Lamalif: A Critical Anthology of Societal Debates in Morocco during the Years of Lead (1966-1988), (Liverpool University Press, 2023). Her articles appear in Jaddaliyya, Language, Culture and Curriculum, and Journal of North African Studies.

Dr. Wafa Bahri teaches in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature at San Francisco State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics (Sociolinguistics) from The Graduate Center, CUNY, and her M.A. in Applied Linguistics from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

Dr. Bahri's primary research focuses on documenting and describing Tunisian Tamazight, with particular emphasis on the discursive construction of the Tamazight language and identity in digital spaces. Her broader scholarly interests span the sociolinguistics of endangered languages, language and gender, and, more recently, language in Amazigh cinema. Beyond her academic pursuits, Dr. Bahri has been a member of the organizing committee of the New York Forum for Amazigh Film (NYFAF) since 2016. In this role, she coordinates the forum's Facebook outreach and oversees its pedagogical programming.

Dr. Yahya Laayouni, an Associate Professor at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania, teaches courses on film, literature, immigration, and language. His research interests focus on Franco-Maghrebi identity in film, Amazigh Indigenous cinema, and migration. His recent publications include a co-authored book titled “Amazigh Cinema: An Introduction to North African Indigenous Film” (2025) and an article titled “Migrant women’s agency and the responsibility towards the other in B. Lojkine’s film Hope” (2025). 

Miranda Schrade is a former research assistant on the NEH Cultural and Community Resilience Grant Transmission Regained: Recalling Traditional Lifeways through Intergenerational Oral History in the 'World's Borough’ Queens and MoMA LaGuardia Scholar at CUNY LaGuardia Community College. She joined the team in 2025 to expand digital awareness of the Forum.

Miranda has contributed to programming by sourcing landmark works like the Tuareg feature Zerzura. She created community engagements like #RADIONYFAF and NYFAF's partnership with Barzakh Café. Miranda is passionate about presenting Amazigh film beautifully to audiences new and old. Herself a filmmaker, her directorial work was screened at Tribeca in 2016.