David DiCerto served as film reviewer for the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops where he covered the film and television industries for Catholic News Service, an international news organization with an audience of over eight million. His work has been published in Catholic papers across the nation and overseas. David has represented the bishops at the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) film rating appeals in Los Angeles and has reported to the bishops’ Communications Committee in Washington, DC on the film and television industries. David regularly provided media commentary on Catholic Radio Weekly and has been interviewed by such diverse outlets as SIRIUS/XM Satellite Radio’s The Catholic Channel, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal. Prior to his reviewing and writing about movies, David worked in the film industry, serving as an assistant to former NYC Film Commissioner, Richard Brick, during Mr. Brick’s tenure as producer of several of Woody Allen’s films, and served as a consultant on the PBS/Frontline documentary The Millennial Pope by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Helen Whitney. Born and raised in New York City, David attended the Archdiocese of New York’s minor seminary, before studying film at Fordham University. He currently lives in Manhattan with his wife Patricia and son.

Steven D. Greydanus is film critic for the National Catholic Register and Decent Films, the online home for his film writing. He also writes for Christianity Today and for various print publications, and is a regular guest on several radio shows. Steven has a BFA in Media Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and an MA in Religious Studies from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, PA. He is a contributor to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, having contributed the article “The Church and Film.” He lives in New Jersey with his wife Suzanne and their six children.

Author of twelve books and a full professor of philosophy at St. John’s University in Jamaica, Queens, New York, Father Robert Lauder has long had an avocation viewing and writing about films, theatre and literature. Considered an authority on the films of the Swedish author/director Ingmar Bergman, Father Lauder has an international reputation as a film analyst. His essays on film have appeared in The Sunday Arts and Leisure Section of the Sunday New York Times, America magazine, Commonweal magazine and in his weekly column which appears in the Brooklyn Tablet every week and in the Long Island Catholic every other week. He has also contributed essays to books about film.

In the popular Friday Film Festival program at Immaculate Conception Center in Douglaston, Father Lauder has shown more than two hundred films, all classics or near classics. Knowing that many still think of film as nothing more than escapist entertainment, Father Lauder believes that film has tremendous potential to influence people deeply, at least as much potential as literature, theatre and television. In fact he believes that film, like other art forms, can be a mediator of God’s grace. This priest-philosopher is fond of saying, “One film will not change anyone’s life but a constant diet of the same type of film has to affect people”. Father Lauder thinks that great films can raise consciousness and challenge conscience. In recent years he has tried to interest Catholic formation programs to include some study of film in their educational efforts.