by Maura Kelly
NYWIFT Board of Directors member Maura Kelly writes about female entrepreneurs in tech and entertainment for The Huffington Post. She recently sat down with Evelyn Brady-Watters and her sister Monica Brady, the founders of the Golden Trailers Awards (GTA’s) as they gear up for the live ceremony on May 4th in LA. Here’s an excerpt:
In 1999, NYWIFT members created the Golden Trailer Awards (GTAs) as the first awards show to honor the best in motion picture trailers and recognize the people who create the short art-form. The sisters were successful commercial producers at the time but the growth of the award show spawned new careers and a full-time business for the siblings. Now in its 17th year, the GTAs have evolved to include trailers for television shows, video games and posters.
Who were your early champions and mentors?
We credit the success of the launch of the GTA’s to our highly respected jury. When we first had the idea for creating the awards, we approached Stephen Woolley (The Crying Game) as a juror. We asked him to judge and he immediately called back and said yes. We then approached Harvey Weinstein and he said Miramax is behind this and gave us David Kaminow as a juror. The big coup came when Quentin Tarantino joined our first year Jury. That was the shot heard round the world for the GTA’s. From that moment on major publications and news media outlets too numerous to mention picked up and ran with the story.
Maura Kelly is an independent Emmy-winning producer and principal of Purple Mountain Media. She is a member of the NYWIFT Board of Directors and Co-chair of the Program Committee.
nywift
Related Posts
Meet the New NYWIFT Member: Sarah Friedland
Welcome to NYWIFT, Sarah Friedland! Sarah Friedland is a filmmaker and choreographer working at the intersection of moving images and moving bodies. Friedland’s debut feature film, Familiar Touch, earned critical acclaim at the Venice International Film Festival last year, where she received both the Lion of the Future/Best Debut Film and the Horizons Award for Best Director. On the heels of her success at Venice, she won an Independent Spirit Award (“Someone to Watch”) and has since been nominated for two Gotham Awards (Breakthrough Director and Best Feature) and another Film Independent Spirit Award (John Cassavetes Award).
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Ida Elina
Welcome, Ida Edina, to NYWIFT! Ida is a multi-hyphenate singer-songwriter, composer, and filmmaker who started playing the Finnish harp at 13. She brands herself as a modern pop kantele queen from the nordics. Ida truly is an ethnomusicologist obsessed with the ancient Kalevala poems of her homeland. Her work currently has over three million views on her YouTube channel. Ida's award-winning short film, Under the Northern Skies, is a journey through her 13-song album that combines original music with an audiovisual concert experience. It premiered in Finland in February 2025. Read on to learn more about Ida's art and her dreams for the year ahead.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Jackie Quinones
Welcome to NYWIFT, Jackie Quinones! Jackie is a boundary-pushing filmmaker with a career that seamlessly blends music, acting, marketing, development, and production. From her roots as a hip-hop artist to her evolution in film, she combines a rare mix of artistic vision and business savvy to create heartfelt, socially resonant stories that leave a lasting influence. Bilingual and Puerto Rican, she is a multi-hyphenate talent - writer, director, actor, and producer - whose work centers on emotionally rich, character-driven stories exploring psychology, identity, and trauma. Jackie's hybrid-genre narratives also reflect on social and political issues through the lens of fractured relationships and complex family dynamics. Committed to amplifying unheard and underrepresented voices, her work is both personal and thought-provoking. Her debut feature film Miles Away premiered at the Austin Film Festival in 2025. It went on to earn the New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) Award for Excellence in Narrative Filmmaking at the Urbanworld Film Festival.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Kelli Reilly
Welcome to NYWIFT, Kelli Reilly! Kelli Reilly is a producer, director, and writer working across narrative film and documentary, based between New York and Los Angeles, and the founder of Quartermaster Creative. She studied film and television at NYU Tisch with a focus in experimental cinema and got her start working on acclaimed documentaries, including Larger Than Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story, The Vow, and Student Athlete. Her recent producing work includes I Got You, SLICK, and The Daughter, and she is currently in post-production on the feature documentary Viva La Dita. She is also in production on the period feature The Florist and is a writer and contributor to the New York Times–recommended podcast Look Behind the Look. In our interview, Kelli discussed how she shaped her artistry, her inspirations, and her upcoming work.
READ MORE
