School of Cinematic Arts
Creative Activity
QUIVER by Shayna Connelly
COUNTER // BALANCE by Anuradha Rana
A few films by Timothy Peternel
Recent Highlights
Saint Frances
by Alex Thompson
Other People’s Children
webseries by Anna Hozian and Brad Riddell
Creative Areas
Animation
Meghann Artes holds an MFA from the Animation Workshop at UCLA. In addition to her academic work, she has years of entertainment industry experience working for companies like Warner Bros, Nickelodeon, Bix Pix, Noggin, NBC, ABC and Sesame Street. She has won both an Emmy and a Peabody and her short films have enjoyed success in film festivals all over the world, with a number of them being chosen for both Short of The Week and Vimeo Staff Pick.
Lisa Barcy has been making animated films for 20 years, and teaching animation since 1997. Her works include
The Guilt Trip, or
The Vaticans Take a Holiday,
The Ordovicians,
Woman Without a Past,
Mermaid, and
Anonanimal, a music video created for Andrew Bird. Her films have been screened in numerous festivals and screenings including Slamdance, Aurora (Norwich, England), The Ottawa International Animation Festival, The Bradford Animation Festival, The Chicago Underground Film Festival as well as solo shows at The Gene Siskel Film Center and Roots and Culture. She received the Directors Citation Award at The Black Maria Film Festival for both
The Guilt Trip and
Mermaid, and the Best Animation award at The Ann Arbor Film Festival for
Mermaid. When not animating she is usually busy creating artist books, collage paintings, and numerous sculptural oddities.
Devin Bell has a passion for storytelling through character animation. His award-winning short films have been in over 80 festivals globally. He attended Skidmore College, where he majored in printmaking and sculpture, and also discovered a love for stop-motion animation. He earned his MFA in animation at CalArts. After seven years in Los Angeles directing short films and commercials, Devin is now teaching fulltime. He continues his personal projects in filmmaking, writing and illustrating.
Jacob Ciocci is a multimedia artist and musician. Ciocci is a founding member of the influential art collective Paper Rad whose work in the field of net.art––one of contemporary arts' recent movements of the true avant-garde––helped ignite the genre, and is considered formative to a generation of younger artists whose works deals with the digital. He is also a co-founder of the long running electronic music and performance group, Extreme Animals. Ciocci has had solo exhibitions with Foxy Productions, New York; Interstate Projects, New York; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto; and And/Or Gallery, Los Angeles. He has exhibited and performed at a range of venues, including MOMA, the New Museum, and the Tate Britain.
Naghmeh Farzaneh, an Iranian filmmaker, art director and animator in Chicago, has earned international acclaim and awards for her independent films at festivals like Animateka, Heartland, Chicago Children’s Film Festival, Tricky women, Farhang, New Orleans Film, and Oberhausen Film Festival. Her animated short
Scent of Geranium premiered on Vimeo and was featured among the top ten short films of 2017 by the National Geographic Short Film Showcase. Over the past decade, she has collaborated extensively with independent artists and filmmakers, playing pivotal roles as a director and art director for clients such as The New Yorker, Meow Wolf, Sesame Workshop, ACLU, TED-ED, and Onassis Foundation, including her noteworthy work as the animation art director for the Emmy-nominated feature documentary In the
Dark of the Valley in 2020.
Brian Ferguson is a 25-year veteran film animator with many major projects to his credit, including some of the highest grossing films of all time. His filmography includes 15 feature films, several as supervising animator, for Walt Disney Animation Studios, including the critically acclaimed and financially successful
Beauty and the Beast,
Lion King,
Aladdin,
Pocahontas,
Mulan,
Fantasia 2000, and
Winnie the Pooh. Brian is especially skilled at conveying humor and appealing personality, as can be seen in his characters among these landmark films. Brian has been an adjunct professor of character animation at the prestigious California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) School of Film and Video. He continues to keep his animation skills at their peak performance by working on numerous freelance projects. Brian is trained and adept in both hand drawn and CG animation. His skills extend to illustration, photography, and piano - which Brian believes helps his understanding of the rhythms and timing of performance. He holds degrees from the New York Institute of Technology (Photography, Computer Graphics), Sheridan College (Classical Animation), and the University of Alberta (Zoology, Physics).
Joshua Jones received his MFA from The University of Southern California where he created the student Academy Award-Nominated film
A Short Lifetime's Poem of Memory. As a stop motion animator at Will Vinton Studios, Jones animated on eight episodes of the three time Emmy award winning showThe PJs, and the two time Emmy award winning UPN show
Gary and Mike. He has worked as a CG animator in feature film and television with Fox TV, Fox Kids, Warner Brothers, Crystal Sky, Creative Visual EFX, Skyler Animation Studios, Oregon Public Broadcasting and National Geographic. His award winning independent animated films have screened internationally.
Chris Kalis' multidisciplinary work combines motion graphics, animation, sound design, film scoring, and interactive media. He is a co-founder of Plural Design and the electronic music collective Chandeliers. In 2015, Chandeliers composed and performed a live soundtrack to Marcell Jankovics' animated masterpiece
Fehérlófia and the theme music to the animated short
Let it Beard. Chris has exhibited video and graphic work at the Hyde Park Art Center, the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the Public Works Gallery. His music has received praise from The WIRE, Pitchfork, and the Chicago Tribune. In 2015, he was selected to contribute design work to the
X/I: Ten Words and One Shot book published by Deutsche & Japaner, and was also featured in the
Typeforce 4, along with DePaul Graphic Design students. He also co-directed and produced a music video,
Mistreated and Wild with Shayna Connelly, which has screened at festivals across the country. In 2016, he completed work on an original score for the feature film
Orders, a music video for recording artist MNLTH, and two Chandeliers vinyl releases. Chris has co-written and is currently directing an animated short film.
Scott Roberts is the co-founder and chair of the DePaul Animation program. He received his M.A. and M.F.A. from the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His current research focuses on hand-drawn animation, visual development, and the potential of generative AI tools for empowering animators and filmmakers. In 2023, he created one of the first courses in the country devoted to exploring generative AI art tools for animation, film, and theater. Scott recently contributed a chapter to
The Field Guide to Graphic Literature.
Steve Socki received an MFA from the Cal Arts Experimental Animation Program where he studied under his mentor Jules Engel. Steve worked for over 25 years in Hollywood as a director & producer on animated TV series such as
Rugrats,
Hey Arnold, and
Curious George. He was an animation timing director on
The Simpsons, and
Futurama. He has been nominated for five Emmy Awards, and has won one. Steve Socki’s current short animated film
Sparrow Duet has been selected to over 30 international film festivals including The Holland Animation Festival, The Melbourne Animation Festival, The Montreal Animation Festival, and The Inde Gathering Festival in Ohio, where it received an honorable mention award.
Creative Producing
Timothy Peternel has been an independent film producer on such critically acclaimed films as
Spun,
Buffalo ‘66,
Love Liza, and
Small Apartments. He served as executive producer on the feature film
Dog Eat Dog directed by Paul Schrader and starring Nicholas Cage and Willem Dafoe. The film premiered closing night in the Directors Fortnight at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and made its North American premiere in the 2016 Toronto Film Festival’s Midnight Madness program. Prior to producing, Tim was vice president of development for the prolific film company Muse Productions and worked on such indie classics as
American Psycho,
The Virgin Suicides, and
Bully.
Documentary
Dana Kupper is a documentary cinematographer from Chicago, and has traveled the world to tell people’s stories. She started in the film business as a union camera technician, working on feature films and TV shows, but left to follow her passion in documentaries. She is an Associate at the highly respected Kartemquin Films, a media arts organization that received the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. Dana was one of the main Director of Photographers on
Stevie, a documentary by Steve James, director of
Hoop Dreams.
Stevie won the Documentary Cinematography Award at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. She was the DP on the Roger Ebert film
Life Itself, which was just nominated for two Emmys, including Best Documentary. Dana and her husband own a production company, and have produced over 30 videos for Chicago Public Schools. She also shoots corporate pieces and commercials in the naturalistic documentary style that is her specialty, and recently returned from Saudi Arabia where she was an Arts Envoy for the US State Department.
Anuradha Rana is an independent filmmaker, educator, mentor, and program leader who has produced and directed award-winning films internationally. Born and raised in India, her immigrant roots create the lens of a curious interloper at the heart of her films, where everyday characters push conventional boundaries. Her work includes
Language of Opportunity, a work-in-progress longitudinal documentary about how language informs personal and cultural identity, which was selected for the 2019 Center for Asian American Media Producer’s Fellowship and the Tribeca Film Institute Network in 2020. She recently produced and co-directed
Musher, an inter-generational portrait of four women sled-dog racers in the Upper Midwest, which premiered at the Oscar-Qualifying Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. Anu is part of the steering committee for the Asian American Documentary Network and a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and the Mezcla Media Collective. She was named one of Chicago Film’s 50 Screen Gems by Newcity Magazine in 2017 and 2019, a DCASE Esteemed Artist in 2021, and selected to ArtEquity’s BIPOC Leadership Cohort in 2021 and DOC NYC’s Documentary New Leaders’ cohort in 2022.
Susanne Suffredin is an editor and independent filmmaker whose 30+ year career spans non-fiction, scripted and commercial genres with a keen emphasis on long form documentaries. Her work has screened at major festivals around the world including Sundance, Cannes, Venice, Tokyo, Chicago International Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. An associate of Kartemquin Films, Susanne was post-production supervisor of
Hoop Dreams, which was named the best film of the 1990s by Roger Ebert. Susanne’s association with the award-winning Kindling Group includes her directorial effort
@home (2014 Booklist Magazine Editors Choice, Official Selection Eugene International Film Festival, Winner Best Documentary Los Angeles Diversity Film Festival, Official Selection Human Rights Film Festival at U.Va.), which broadcast nationally on PBS in 2015 and internationally in 2016. Her prior work includes the landmark series
The Calling which she co-produced and edited for PBS’s Independent Lens. Susanne edited the MacArthur funded
Count Me In, which broadcast on PBS. She was named one of Chicago Film’s 50 Screen Gems by Newcity Magazine in 2017.
Post Production
Brian Andrews is a storyteller and visual technologist who creates media for the visual effects, animation, and fine art markets. His works have been exhibited at the Sundance Film Festival, Le Marché du Film Festival de Cannes, Hong Kong Exhibitions Centre, the Queens Museum, and the California Academy of Sciences among many others. Always an inquisitor of the creative process, Brian Andrews also records on contemporary art and filmmaking as a senior producer and co-host for Bad at Sports. He was awarded a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as a dual Bachelor of Arts with Highest Honors in Visual Arts, Psychology, and a minor in Media from the University of California San Diego. He is an active member of the Visual Effects Society. Currently he serves as the chair of Post-Production at DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts.
Kevin Cagnolatti is an accomplished sound designer with a passion for teaching. His interest in sound design started when he produced hip hop music and helped produce two jazz albums. After taking a class in Sound for the Visual Media, he was inspired to become a sound designer. As a freelancer, he has worked on notable projects for clients such as The Onion, AV Club, and Periscope Audio and Post. In addition to his work as a sound designer, he has been teaching sound design and media arts for several years. Kevin is a member of several prestigious organizations, including the Cinema Audio Society, Motion Pictures Sound Editors, and the Audio Engineering Society. His work has been recognized and awarded at festivals such as the Big Picture Film Festival and the Lake Michigan Film Festival. Kevin holds a degree in Audio Arts and Acoustics from Columbia College Chicago, a Masters in Film from DePaul University, and a Masters in Sound Arts from Northwestern University
Michael X. Flores attended the University of Southern California, where he received a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema-Television Production. While studying at USC, Michael was awarded several scholarships including the John Frankenheimer Directing Scholarship for merit in directing and the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts Entertainment Scholarship. He was also selected to participate as a fellow in Film Independent’s Project:Involve, in which he was personally mentored by Jeffrey Blitz: director of the Academy-Award-nominated documentary -Spellbound (2002). He edited the Student-Emmy-winning TV pilot, “Cost of Living” and wrote and directed an award-winning short film called
Esperando (Waiting/Hoping). After graduating from USC, Michael worked as an assistant editor on Tamra Davis’s documentary
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (2010), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival; on Lisa Leeman’s documentary
One Lucky Elephant (2010), which premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival; and on Bess Kargman’s documentary
First Position (2011), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. As an editor, Michael has worked on films such as Nick Broomfield’s documentary
Sarah Palin: You Betcha! (2011), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival;
Last Will. & Testament (2012), which was executive produced by Roland Emmerich;
Justice for My Sister (2012), which won Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival; Eddie Alcazar’s documentary
Tapia (2013), which premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival;
Harmontown (2014), which premiered at SXSW; Tommy O'Haver's
The Most Hated Woman in America (2017) for Netflix, which premiered at SXSW; and Jason Kohn’s documentary
Love Means Zero (2017) for Showtime, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Recently, he edited a documentary for HBO and Duplass Brothers Productions called
Last Stop Larrimah (2023), which premiered at SXSW in March 2023 and will be premiering on HBO in October 2023. Currently, he is working on a doc series for Nat Geo and Disney+ called
The Biggest Little Farm Series.
Melissa Lawrenz is a Chicago based filmmaker and editor. She holds a B.A. in Theatre Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.F.A. in film production from Columbia College Chicago. Her work, including the feature film
The Other One and shorts like
Jesse James,
The Miracle,
Towing,
Cut Out and
Taco Mary, has been exhibited in more than 200 film festivals in North America, Africa, Europe and Asia. Her experimental documentary
I Hope, Grandmother screened on PBS in Illinois and Wisconsin and at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. Melissa was the Senior Video Editor for The Onion for five years and has also edited branded and social content for the A.V. Club, Gizmodo, The Root, Jalopnik, The Takeout, Teen Vogue, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Wired, Bon Appétit, Epicurious, House & Garden, Architectural Digest, World of Interiors and TIDAL.
Savvas is a filmmaker, Editor, VFX artist, colorist and post production specialist. Savvas has an MFA in Film & TV (Tisch School of the Arts, NYU). He has a background in Architecture (School of the Arts, Berlin) and International Journalism (The City University, London). He has worked at various times as a storyboarder (including VFX storyboards), cartoonist, comic-book artist, photographer, videographer, script reader, and so on. Savvas started his filmmaking career with documentary and commercial projects in London and Lebanon. He worked in his home country, Greece, on live and episodic TV. In the US, Savvas concentrated on editing and post production, gradually specializing in online editing and color correction. He has edited two features and a number of shorts, ranging from
Sesame Street letters to award-winning drama. Before starting work at DePaul University, Savvas worked at Postworks NY as their main Final Cut Pro online editor, colorist and post-production consultant.
Robert Steel is a composer and sound designer for cinema, theater and other media. Recent credits include the films
Junk Girl (Sound of Silent Film Festival),
147 Pianos,
Speed Dating,
Sleepy Steve,
Signals,
Memorial,
Undocumented,
Flat Chested,
Scarlet,
Reunion,
The Mom Project, and
Lobster Stew for Soprano and
Virtual Instruments.
Memorial for Soprano,
Electronics and Video, premiered at the University of Iowa. He is on faculty at the School of Cinematic Arts at DePaul University where he runs CDM Sound Studios. He is a recipient of After Dark awards, the DePaul University Excellence in Teaching Award, a University Research Council Grant, a Global Learning Experience Grant and awards from ASCAP and the Illinois Arts Council.
Production
Ambarien Alqadar is an Indian-born filmmaker, writer, and educator whose work explores themes of home, exile, displacement, and the American Dream. Trained at India's Jamia Millia Islamia, she developed her passion for screenwriting and directing through years of documentary work. She was a Fulbright-Nehru Leadership Development Fellow at Temple University, Center for Performing and Cinematic Arts from where she graduated with an MFA in Film and Media Arts. Ambarien received the Emerging Voice in India Cinema Award 2023 for her screenplay Nisa (Woman), which is green-lit for production.
Bird Woman, her feature length screenplay, was selected to The Athena Screenwriters Lab, New York, The Stowe Story Labs and shortlisted at 1497. Ambarien's documentary
The Calligrapher earned the Best Documentary Short Award at the 2023 Chicago South Asian Film Festival.
Rachel Bass is a film director based in Chicago. She has won seven international awards and two Director’s Guild of America awards including Best African-American Film in the West Region for her short Thicker than Water. Rachel earned her MFA in Directing from Chapman University and her BA in Black Studies from Amherst College. She has taught Directing and Visual Storytelling at Chapman University and London's Solaris International Film School, and currently resides as a professor of film production at DePaul University.
Pete Biagi is a Chicago-based working cinematographer. Two films he shot,
Stolen Summer and
Design, were accepted into competition at the Sundance film festival. He started work as an electrician, joining Studio Mechanics Local 476, working on large scale national commercials and studio movies. Later, he transitioned into working with Local 600/International Camera Guild as a camera operator/2nd unit DP on the film
Chicago Cab. Pete has traveled to Uruguay, South Korea, Nepal and Japan to film segments for Lions Club International. He operated camera on the Robert Altman films
The Company and
A Prairie Home Companion. He continues to shoot commercials for national brands and politicians, including Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams.
James Choi is a prolific, award-winning filmmaker with over a decade of film industry experience in Los Angeles having worked in representation, production and digital media. As an independent producer, James has produced two feature films from first time directors that have premiered at South by Southwest.
Made in China winning the Grand Jury Award and Best Female Director and distributed by IFC Films and
Saint Frances the Audience Award and Jury Award for Breakthrough Voice and distributed by Oscilloscope Films.
Saint Frances was also nominated for two Gotham Awards and the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards in 2021.
An active member in Chicago’s filmmaking community, James was frequently selected as one of Newcity's Film 50 - the leaders of Chicago's film culture. Having been in the forefront of the micro independent film movement in the last decade, James has produced and directed numerous films that have screened widely all around the world, winning awards and receiving distribution.
Shayna Connelly’s work explores liminality and the boundaries between documentary, experimental and fiction filmmaking. Connelly’s lifelong obsession with ghosts led her to explore competing identities, the impact of trauma on perception, and the link between fear and desire. Her hybrid approach to cinema questions the strict categorization of film modes and genres. Her recent work features a collection of eight films called
A Memory Palace of Ghosts that connect the ways hauntings affect our daily lives. In the series, hauntings arise from traumatic events, mental illness, everyday routines, the search for truth and the aftermath of grief. Such hauntings culminate in a questioning of her identities as feminist, mother and artist. Films from the series have screened at over 200 festivals including Ann Arbor, Athens International, Palm Springs, Sydney Underground, Chicago Underground and Chicago Feminist Film Festival. She has won awards from the University Film and Video Association, Women in Horror Film Festival, Big Muddy, Ithaca Fantastik, Columbus International, Berlin Short Film Festival and The Artists Forum Festival. Newcity magazine named her as one of 50 Chicago screen gems in 2016 and 2018.
Ron Eltanal has produced, written, directed, shot and edited award-winning short films that have screened at numerous festivals and competitions, including Sundance, Torino International, LA Shorts and the Student Academy and Emmy Awards. Additionally, he has directed a feature film and music videos, written feature screenplays, and co-founded a non-profit theatre company.
Lori Felker is a filmmaker, teacher, programmer, and performer. Her films celebrate the ineloquent, oppositional, frustrating, chaotic qualities of human interaction. She has made work in a variety of forms including, experimental film, video installation, music video, documentary, and fiction. Her short films, feature documentary, and music videos have screened internationally at festivals including Rotterdam, Slamdance, Ann Arbor Film Festival, BAMcinemaFest, EXiS in Korea, Festival du nouveau cinema in Montreal and Kinodot in Russia. She loves every facet of the film world and has worked as a cinematographer, editor, and/or actor for various artists and directors and has programmed and organized for the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Slamdance, the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival and Roots & Culture Gallery in Chicago. She has has received an Illinois Arts Council Grant, a Wexner Center Residency, a Chicago Digital Media Production Fund Grant, a Brico Forward Fund Grant and a Fulbright Fellowship (Berlin, 2000).
Daniel Klein received his Master of Fine Arts at Chapman University, where he wrote two Student Academy Award winning short films,
It’s Just A Gun (2016) and
Esta Es Tu Cuba (2018).
Esta Es Tu Cuba has since been awarded the 2019 College Television Award for Best Drama and the HBO Ibero American Short Film Award at the 2019 Miami International Film Festival. Dan previously wrote and directed the narrative short film
AB-, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, after which it screened at film festivals around the world. He has also created and sold original television projects to Twentieth Century Fox and Touchstone Studios.
Raised in Chicago, John Psathas has worked as a director, writer, producer, and editor. As the founder of Analog Productions, his commercial work includes projects for companies like Sprite, Heartgard, Bacardi, and Aussie Shampoo. John's award-winning films have screened at festivals internationally and cover a diverse spectrum of subjects and genres, ranging from bittersweet comedy to gritty drama and include both narratives and documentaries. His short drama
Milwaukee was a regional finalist for the Student Academy Award.
Happy Birthday Kevin, a short comedy shot with DePaul students and alums, won awards and played in over 50 festivals internationally.
Rise Up, his short documentary, has won several awards including Best Documentary at Reel Sisters, the first Academy Award Qualifying Film Festival for shorts devoted to women of color. His short documentary,
Birthday, received the Jury's Choice Award at the Black Maria Film Festival and was selected as one of the fest's Touring Collection films. His first feature,
Bernadette, had its world premiere in competition at the Cleveland International Film Festival and went on to win several awards on the festival circuit. As the first feature-length Project Bluelight of its kind, John created
Bernadette in collaboration with 15 DePaul students over three sequential courses. The film is currently in talks for distribution.
After graduating from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Wendy spent over a decade in independent film, working in virtually every department, before finally leaving the grind of production to work on her own projects. Her independent pilot
Inferno (made as a Project Bluelight) is streaming on Roku Channel and was an official selection at several festivals. Her feature-length documentary on hospice nurses,
Stopping for Death: The Nurses of Wells House Hospice, is distributed by Passion River Films. With the group Higher Mammals, Wendy has also been a contributor to NPR's All Thing's Considered, Day to Day and Radiolab, and she produced an audiobook "Concrete, Invisible, Bulletproof and Fried: My Life as a Revolting Cock" with Chicago Musician Chris Connelly. She is co-host and co-creator of the podcast “SHABAM!,” a family friendly serialized science show.
Andrew graduated from DePaul University with a BA in Digital Cinema. He then attended the University of Edinburgh, receiving a MSc in Film Studies. His Master's Thesis, "Weapons of Mass Distraction," explored the convergence culture of War and Media in the wake of September 11th and the War on Terror. His present academic research explores Time, Space, and Memory in Cinema: An ontological approach to the cinematic experience. Andrew is also an independent filmmaker. He has written and co-directed several award winning short films. Most recently, Andrew completed production on a feature film that he wrote and co-directed.
Noelle Thomas is a production designer and award winning set designer for film, television, opera and theater. Her creative contributions span from large-scale streaming series to indie shorts. Noelle holds an MFA in Stage Design from Northwestern University School of Communication and a BFA in Scenic Design from The Theater School at DePaul University. Her production design credits include
Reservation Dogs,
Chicago Med,
South Side,
Night Sky, and
Empire. She received a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Scenic Design for
Awake and
Sing.
Chi-Jang Yin is known for her experimental documentary, which comments on the effect of individuals intertwining with political and socioeconomic infrastructure. Yin’s expertise in Experimental Cinema, Cinéma Vérité, Observational Documentary, Ethnographic Films, and media and film studies informs a diverse body of award-winning work that has been recognized internationally in galleries, exhibitions, and film festivals.
Yin’s films have been shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; European Media Arts Festival in Osnabrouck, Germany; Kasseler Dokumentarfilm-und Videofest, Germany; Asolo Art Film Festival, Italy; The Lazniz Centre for Contemporary Art, Poland; Toronto International Film Festival, Canada; Manchester Arts Centre, United Kingdom; The Contemporary Center of Art, Bulgaria; The Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago; The Pacific Film Archive, The University of California-Berkeley; Los Angeles Film Festival, and Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, IDFA, The Netherlands.
Brian Zahm is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited worldwide at film festivals, screening series, clubs, and art galleries. Riding the analog-to-digital wave for over twenty years, he works in narrative, documentary and experimental filmmaking, performs and produces electronic music, indulges in photography and graphic design, and enjoys writing "fast-food" fiction. Having spent much of his career working in the commercial film and media industry, over the past several years his reputation has grown as a prolific outsider artist due to bold and diverse stylistic explorations with such films as Audition For Death,
Le Nu,
Auraprint,
Wiggah,
Milquetoast,
See Wall, and
Tea Party. No matter what artistic direction, he strives to create a timeless, unforgettable experience through his work, this aim cemented with the documentary feature
Headspace: The Sound of Life, for which he was the writer, cinematographer and editor—the film called
Visionary by The New York Times.
Screenwriting
Anna was one of twelve women chosen for the inaugural year of the New York Women in Film and Television Writers Lab funded by Meryl Streep. Her winning script
Anchor Baby is currently under option with Lynmar Productions. Anna’s scripts have placed in numerous contests from the Academy's Nicholl Fellowship to the Page International Screenwriting Awards and the Samuel Goldwyn Awards. Her first web series,
Other People’s Children, which she co-wrote/directed with Brad Riddell, made its way around the world in festivals ranging from Rio to Bilboa to Melbourne to Seoul. She is in the works on her next project, a short film entitled
The Pool.
Jessica King is an award-winning interdisciplinary filmmaker who’s written, directed, and produced two feature films, numerous shorts, and over a dozen web series. Her most recent film work includes
F*ck Yes, a modern sex ed series focused on improving communication (and sex) between consenting adults (distributed by Seed&Spark and OTV) and the queer dance series
Full Out, which can be found on OTV, a Chicago-based platform for art and television by queer, trans and cis-women and people of color. She speaks around the country on topics related to filmmaking, social media, and crowd-funding. Jessica’s book
Social Media Charm School is used to teach the art of audience engagement at film festivals and universities around the world.
Scott has written over thirty movie and TV projects for nearly every major Hollywood studio and broadcast network. His screenwriting credits include
K-9 (Universal) which spawned two sequels,
Alaska (Sony/Castle Rock), and
Trojan War (Warner Bros.). From 2002-2010, Scott was an executive producer at Trailblazer Studios, overseeing the company’s original content development for TV including the Scripps and Discovery networks. Scott has taught in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, receiving its Outstanding Instructor Award in 2005, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and joined the faculty at the DePaul University School of Cinematic Arts in the fall 2016. Since 2008, Scott has hosted GoIntoTheStory.com which in 2018 was named Best of the Best Scriptwriting Website by
Writer’s Digest. Scott graduated from the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Arts degree (with Honors) in Religious Studies and Yale University, where he received a Masters of Divinity degree
cum laude. His book
The Protagonist’s Journey: An Introduction to Character-Driven Screenwriting and Storytelling was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022.
Gary has been at DePaul since 2002 and is one of the founding members of the Cinema Program. He has worked as a producer, writer, and director. The projects have included commercials, documentaries, television series, and independent feature films. Gary has a M.F.A. in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute.
Christopher Parrish is a screenwriter with produced credits in film and television including
Curb your Enthusiasm,
The King of Queens,
American Dragon: Jake Long and MTV’s Next. Most recently, Chris wrote and directed the comedy adventure
Thrill Ride starring Kristen Johnston (3rd Rock from the Sun) and served as script consultant on the comedy
The Pickle People starring Academy Award nominee David Paymer. Chris has sold numerous features and television pilots to Disney, Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., New Line Cinema and Dreamworks. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America and the Directors Guild of America.
Matt Quinn is a screenwriter and film studio story analyst. He received a B.A. in Film and Video from Columbia College and an M.F.A. in Screenwriting from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Matt has worked in feature development at DreamWorks Studios, DreamWorks Animation and as a reader for Ben Stiller's Red Hour Films. He is currently developing an animated television series entitled
Let it Beard based on his Project Bluelight short film and is co-writing & producing an adaptation of the cult novel
Illuminatus!: The Eye in the Pyramid.
Brad has written four produced feature films on assignment for Paramount, MTV, Universal and independent producers. Brad’s first film,
American Pie: Band Camp, remains one of the highest-grossing live action DVD releases in history, selling two million copies and reaching syndication on TBS.
Crooked Arrows was released nationally in theaters in 2012, and is the first mainstream lacrosse movie ever produced.
Ten More, his directorial debut, screened at over twenty festivals in the U.S., winning prizes for best directing and best screenplay. His web series,
Other People's Children and Distant Learners have screened all over the world and earned prizes for directing, writing, and acting. In 2019, Brad directed his first feature film,
Later Days, which was released by Gravitas Ventures. Brad earned a BA in English with a minor in Theater from the University of Kentucky and an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.
Fatou Samba is an editor, director, and writer who got her start working in reality television back in Norway where she’s from. There she field-directed and edited shows like the Norwegian version of
Survivor,
Cops and
Paradise Hotel. Since transitioning into writing she has placed in several screenwriting competitions including WeScreenplay Diverse Voices and Austin Film Festival. Fatou earned a BA in Film & Video Directing from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA in Screenwriting at DePaul University. After working as a reader for The Blacklist and as a development assistant in Los Angeles, Fatou has now returned to DePaul where she teaches screenwriting.
Allie Solomon is a published essayist and television writer. Most recently she has written and produced nine episodes of the CBS drama
Blue Bloods. Previously she worked for The Levinson Fontana Company on television dramas such as
Copper and
Borgia. She studied creative writing at the University of Iowa and received her MFA in dramatic writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is currently working on several projects, including original television development as well as a novel, while living in Chicago with her screenwriter husband and daughter.
José is an international showrunner, screenwriter and producer, whose work has been mainly featured in Mexico and Latin America. He recently created and wrote the TV Series
¡AY GÜEY! produced and distributed worldwide by media giant Televisa. He has served as a major reviewer for important series like
La Reina Del Sur, locally produced series like
Gran Hermano (Big Brother), and created the first two-year Telenovela Screenwriting Program in the world. José has a BA degree in Communications with a television production concentration, a post baccalaureate in Semiotics and an MBA on Marketing and Advertising, all by Universidad Anáhuac in Mexico City. Many international institutions consistently have him as a lecturer. He taught film and television theory and praxis for more than 18 years, both in Mexico and the United States, before joining DePaul University in 2012.