Jack Christal-Gattanella is a professional film critic, independent filmmaker and educator who was born and raised in North-East, NJ. Starting with writing comments on Imdb as a hobby, Jack gained the attention of editors and began writing for Kent Turner at the web-site Film-Forward.com in 2006, which specializes in art-house, independent, world cinema and documentaries. While working part-time reviewing films and covering local festivals and conventions, Jack earned a BA in Communications at William Paterson University in New Jersey and earned his MFA in Film History and Screenwriting at Academy of Art University in San Francisco in 2013, leading to becoming an adjunct professor of English and Cinema at various colleges in New Jersey.  

Since then, Jack has created and produces the podcast "The Wages of Cinema," which reviews classic and contemporary films and has a series of interviews with local artists and creators, and writes for his own blog, The Cinetarium, which has been going on for 15 years. He is also a producer and director with shorts and features distributed online. Jack loves to dig into an entire body of work, a genre, anything under the sun, and is currently on a mission to complete the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" list" and writes regularly on Letterboxd.

Outlet: Film Forward, Wages of Cinema, Cinetarium