School of Cinematic Arts
Creative Activity

Meghann Artes

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

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

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

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

Naghmeh Farzaneh is an award winning Iranian filmmaker and animator. After finishing her BFA in painting in her hometown, Tehran, she found the stories she had to tell were bigger than the surface of a canvas. In her exploration for a new medium she began her first animated film. In 2011 she immigrated to the United States to continue filmmaking and earned her MFA in Animation at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Over the years Naghmeh has done extensive work in two-dimensional animation, collaborative works with independent artists and filmmakers, and served on the juries of several international film festivals. Aside from directing her independent films she holds clients such as ACLU, TED-ED and Onassis Foundation in her resume. Naghmeh has served on the faculties of the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges prior joining DePaul University.     

Brian Ferguson

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

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 PJ's, 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

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

Scott Roberts’ sculptures, video installations and animations have been exhibited internationally. He also has over ten years of professional experience in television art direction, post-production, animation and 3D game art, and was the production designer for the independent film, Making Revolution.     

Steve Socki

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.     

Steven A. Jones

Steven A. Jones has been a producer in Residence at DePaul since 2007. He graduated from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Design. He started his film career as an animation director, directing national commercial spots for clients including Capn' Crunch and McDonalds among many others. His film producing career began with Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer and includes Mad Dog and Glory, Normal Life, Wild Things, Drunkboat, The Promotion, and The Merry Gentleman. His films have played The Cannes Film Festival, the Telluride Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival, Sundance, SXSW and others. Steve has also produced and directed commercials, music videos, documentaries and concert video wall Content for the Band Styx. He has most recently completed the film The Harvest, directed by John McNaughton and starring Michael Shannon, Samantha Morton and Peter Fonda. The Harvest premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2013.     

Timothy Peternel

Timothy Peternel has been an independent film producer on such critically acclaimed films as Spun, Buffalo ‘66, Love Liza, and Small Apartments. Most recently he served as Executive Producer on the feature film titled Dog Eat Dog directed by Paul Schrader and stars Nicholas Cage and Willem Dafoe. The film premiered closing night in the Directors Fortnight at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and will make its North American premiere in the 2016 Toronto Film Festival’s Midnight Madness program. Prior to producing, he 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. Timothy holds a MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern California’s Masters of Professional Writing Program, and has lectured at numerous universities in Los Angeles before accepting a post as an assistant professor at DePaul.     

Dana Kupper

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

Anuradha Rana’s passion for finding and telling stories has inspired her work as a Journalist, TV Producer, Social Worker, Writer – and now Filmmaker – over the past 15 years. Her films have screened internationally and focus on themes of representation, identity, and varied perspectives. Her short documentary, Ring Laila, was used as a means of inspiring girls and young women in rural, underserved villages around India. Her most recent films include Variations, a portrait of three virtuoso artists as they challenge myopic views about disabilities, and Preserves (producer), a poetic journey into one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, the Yasuní rainforest in Ecuador. She is currently workshopping a feature documentary on the politics of language with Kartemquin's Diverse Voices in Doc Lab, and exploring storytelling through transmedia as she completes an interactive documentary with Doris Rusch and DePaul students on young adults and mental health. She received her MFA in Film from Columbia College Chicago and her MA in Mass Communication from the University of Pune, India.     

Susanne Suffredin

Susanne Suffredin is an editor and filmmaker whose 30-year career spans non-fiction, narrative and commercial genres with a keen emphasis on long form documentaries. Films she has edited have screened at major festivals around the world including Sundance, Cannes, Venice, Tokyo, Chicago International Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival to name a few. An associate of Kartemquin Films, a leader in documentary filmmaking today, Susanne was post-production supervisor of the ground-breaking film Hoop Dreams, selected the most important documentary film in history by the International Documentary Association, among her many other credits with the famed house. Susanne’s association with the award-winning Kindling Group includes her most recent 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 ITVS funded series The Calling which she co-produced and edited for PBS’s Independent Lens. She recently finished editing the MacArthur funded Count Me In for Sommer Filmworks which had a broadcast in 2016 nationally on PBS. She is also one the editors for the award-winning web series Other People’s Children. She is now a fulltime faculty member at DePaul University's School of Cinematic Arts.     

Brian Andrews

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.     

Michael Flores

Michael X. Flores has worked on several award-winning films since attending 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, during which time 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) (2006). 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. He then edited Nick Broomfield’s documentary Sarah Palin: You Betcha! (2011), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival; Terri Hanauer’s narrative feature Sweet Talk (2012); Lisa and Laura Wilson’s documentary Last Will & Testament (2012), which was executive produced by Roland Emmerich; and Kimberly Bautista’s documentary Justice for My Sister (2012), which won Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. He also worked on Eddie Alcazar’s documentary Tapia (2013), which premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival; Neil Berkeley’s documentary Harmontown (2014), which premiered at South By Southwest; Eve Marson's documentary Dr. Feelgood: Dealer or Healer? (2015), which premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival; and Tommy O'Haver's biopic The Most Hated Woman in America (2017), which premiered at South by Southwest. Recently, Michael worked with director Jason Kohn on a documentary for Showtime called Love Means Zero (2017), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.     

Savvas Paritsis

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

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.     

Rachel Bass

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

Pete Biagi has worked in the local Chicago film production community for over 25 years shooting over 24 feature films and numerous short films. Two films he shot were accepted into competition at the Sundance film festival – Stolen Summer and Design. 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 (adapted from the play Hell Cab). He’s had the good fortune to be the camera operator on Robert Altman’s last two films. He has recently travelled to Uruguay, South Korea, Nepal and Japan to film segments for Lions Club International. He continues to shoot commercials for national brands and politicians - most notably former Vice President Joe Biden and Georgia politician Stacey Abrams. He continues to support the student group “Inclusion in the Industry” by hosting workshops per student request. Recent topics have included lighting and makeup for people of color, commercial tabletop lighting, and steadicam operating. He continues to enjoy creating and imagining photographic imagery for narrative films.     

James Choi

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

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

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

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). Research Area 

Daniel Klein

Daniel Klein is the Chair of the Master of Fine Arts in Film and Television Directing. 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. Klein 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. Klein has also created and sold original television projects to Twentieth Century Fox and Touchstone Studios.     

John Psathas

Raised in Chicago, John Psathas has been working in film for over a decade 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. As a director, 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 Awards and the opening night short film at the San Diego Latino Film Festival. Happy Birthday Kevin, a short comedy shot with DePaul students and alums, won awards and played in over 50 festivals internationally including The Dam Short Film Festival. 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. Recently, 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. During 2019, the film will screen in over 40 theaters and universities internationally. His recently released first feature, Bernadette, had its world premiere in competition at the Cleveland International Film Festival. Currently on the circuit, Bernadette has won a total of 14 awards at 12 festivals. As the first feature-length Project Bluelight of its kind, Psathas created Bernadette in collaboration with 15 DePaul students over three sequential courses. The film is currently in talks for distribution.     

Wendy Roderweiss

Born and raised in Chicago, Wendy left for the west coast to attend the production program at USC's School of Cinematic Arts. She spent over a decade in independent film, working in virtually every department. She decided to leave the daily grind of production work to focus on her own projects as well as making documentary films for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She has written and produced numerous short films that have shown at film festivals across the country. Wendy completed a feature length documentary on hospice nurses, “Stopping for Death: The Nurses of Wells House Hospice” which is distributed by Passion River Films. She continues to work on a comedic short film series based on the five stages of grief. The first film in this series, 'Stage One' is distributed by Ouat Media and premiered on Movieola film channel in 2012. The third film, Stage Three, is distributed by Pacific Voice Inc. in Japan.     

Wendy's most recent project is an independent TV Pilot, "Inferno" produced as part of DePaul's Project Bluelight program. An official selection of Series Fest, "Inferno" is starting its festival run in 2020.     

She also has a passion for audio, and with the group Higher Mammals has contributed to NPR's All Thing's Considered, Day to Day and Radio Lab. She produced the audiobook "Concrete, Invisible, Bulletproof and Fried: My Life as a Revolting Cock" with Chicago Musician Chris Connelly, available on Audible Books. She also produces a variety of podcasts and is co-host and co-creator of a Google sponsored family friendly science podcast called SHABAM! which is currently in its first season on itunes. SHABAM! was recently picked up by Roddenberry Podcast Networks (Star Trek) and season 2, in pre-production will be in partnership with Roddenberry.     

Andrew Stasiulis

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.     

Brian Zahm

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.     

He puts his career in education, and the opportunity to mentor students, above all else. A true career highlight was the unique opportunity to take his educational and professional production skills to Guyana, South America where he was tasked to help bring a narrative film industry to the country as part of a grant from Higher Education for Development (H.E.D.) and USAID, this project called The President’s Film Endowment. Over the course of four months, he taught all phases of cinema production to 180 students, ages 18-65, who had little-to-no film experience. With this newfound knowledge along with modest production equipment and resources, the students created eight short narrative films featuring Guyanese culture and formed a film collective known as CineGuyana. Ultimately these films went all over the world to film festivals and eventually were shown at The American Film Institute.     

Anna Hozian

Anna was one of twelve women chosen for the inaugural year of the New York Women in Film and Television’s 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 has been making its way around the world in festivals ranging from Rio to Bilboa to Melbourne to Seoul and currently can be found on BoredTeachers.com. She is in the works on her next project, a short film, entitled, The Pool.     

Jessica King

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 Myers

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. He is currently writing a book commissioned by Palgrave Macmillan: “The Protagonist’s Journey: An Introduction to Character Driven Screenwriting and Storytelling.”     

Gary Novak

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

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

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 Riddell

Brad Riddell has written four feature films for major Hollywood studios including Paramount, MTV, and Universal. His first film, American Pie: Band Camp, remains one of the highest-grossing live-action DVD releases in history, and is now syndicated on TBS. His most recent film, Crooked Arrows, was the first mainstream lacrosse movie ever produced. Brad’s other feature credits include films in the Road Trip and Slap Shot franchises. He recently co-wrote and co-directed the feature film Later Days, and is currently developing a feature comedy for Branded Pictures Entertainment and legendary skater, Tony Hawk. His web series, Other People’s Children, which he co-created with Anna Hozian, has won awards at festivals around the world. Brad holds an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he taught for seven years before accepting a post at DePaul. Find out more about him at bradriddell.com, and @bradriddell on Twitter and Instagram.     

Fatou Samba

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.     

Jose Soto

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.