Faculty and Staff
Giese, Maria
writer,director and producer- wrote and directed When Saturday Comes. Giese also wrote, directed and produced the digital feature film Hunger. In addition, she has written two original feature films and is attached to direct the futuristic thriller, Matching Blue, as well as the media satire, Justice, starring Daryl Hannah and Dennis Hopper. Giese re-wrote North Star and wrote The Life Story of Che Guevara. A graduate of Wellesley College and UCLA's Graduate School of Film & Television, Giese completed a short documentary and two short films including the Student Academy Award finalist, A Dry Heat. Giese is the recipient of numerous awards including two Cine Eagles, a Kovler Writing Award, a Spotlight Award, First Prize at the American International Film Festival, a Charles Speroni Scholarship, and an MPAA Award of Excellence. Giese lectures regularly and teaches film production at UCLA Extension.
Gold, Daniel B
director and cameraman- won the 2002 Sundance "Excellence in Cinematography Award" for his work on Blue Vinyl, which he co-directed and co-produced. Gold also received two Emmy Nominations for Blue Vinyl in 2003: Research, and Best Documentary. His recent broadcast credits as DP include The Nazi Officer's Wife, Breaking the Violence and segments on the PBS series Colonial House. Upcoming broadcasts include Saving Xiera, for HBO. Gold's camera work has frequently been seen on Saturday Night Live, Dateline NBC, and the Hallmark Channel. Most recently, Gold produced and co-directed Everythings Cool, a toxic comedy about global warming, while concurrently working as DP on several documentaries in progress including Bigger Than Life, about Toots Shore, and Saint Misbehavin', about Wavy Gravy.
Gross, Jeff
writer- is the author of seven novels and twenty-two scripts including collaborations with Roman Polanski on Frantic and Bitter Moon. He also has two documentaries on the Sundance Film Festival to his name, as well as a short film called Un Jour. Recently he directed the feature film Monsieur Boulo, a silent comedy.
- http://www.mythsmith.com/
Hawkins, Gary
writer and director- has written and directed six films, including The Rough South of Harry Crews - winner of an Emmy Award and the CPB Gold Award in 1992 and The Rough South of Larry Brown - picked Best Feature at the Savannah Film Festival, reviewed by The Oxford American as an "essential Southern documentary" and by Variety as "a beautifully conceived documentary film." His screenplay, DownTime, was selected by The Sundance Institute for the Writer's Lab in the winter of 2000 and the Director's Lab the following summer. He taught directing at the North Carolina School of the Arts School of Filmmaking for eight years in the nineties, and presently teaches non-fiction filmmaking at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He recently produced Shotgun Stories, a 35mm indie feature set in Little Rock, Arkansas. He also adapted the Larry Brown novel, Joe, for Capricorn Pictures of Atlanta, Ga. Elroy Nights for Will Patton and Edwards Curtain.
Held, Wolfgang
Director of Photography started his career in New York City in the early 1990s. His first theatrical feature in the US, Ripe. He has since photographed many feature films, including Rob Morrow's directorial debut Maze, Floating, a Phaedra release of 1999, for which Held was awarded the Best Cinematography prize at the 1999 New England Film Festival, and two films by director Gary Winick, The Tic Code starring Gregory Hines and Polly Draper and Sam The Man starring Fisher Stevens and Annabella Sciorra. Wolfgang has also been photographing numerous documentary features. Recent credits include Metallica Some Kind Of Monster (2005) and Mad Hot Ballroom. His intimate portrayal of homeless children in Children Underground, directed by Edet Belzberg, won the Special Jury Documentary Award at Sundance 2001and was an Academy Award nominee in 2001. Held served as Director of Photography for Wigstock The Movie directed by Barry Shils, a successful Samuel Goldwyn theatrical release in 1998. His camerawork in Broken Meat, which was shown at Sundance in 1991, won Best Cinematography at the Oberhausen International Film Festival.
Hofstein, Michael
educator, author, director, and a cinematographyer- He teaches courses in film production, including directing, camera, documentary, lighting and story. He currently is a professor at Savannah College of Art and Design and has also taught at UCLA, International Film Workshops (Maine), Sony Institute and seminars for ITVA and SMPTE. In addition to teaching he authored Creative Control, a book on filmmaking techniques and has served as a contributing editor for Indie Slate Magazine. He has also as the director or cinematographer for several feature films, 2nd Unit Visual Effects, commercials and music videos. Some of his visual effects work includes the films Rush Hour, Drop Zone, Mask of Zorro and Dracula.
Houghton, Tom
director of photography- who has worked extensively in feature films and documentaries. Some of his credits include The Cookout, Fire Down Below, One Dozen, Barstow 2008, Forever Fabulous aka Tiara Tango, The Best Generation, and Postcard from Vietnam. Tom has also served as the DP for Rescue Me, a new television show on FX starring Dennis Leary. In addition he has shoot several commercials, short films and Saturday Night Live commercial spoofs.
Knowles, Michael
Michael is an award winning filmmaker. His short film Nick and Stacey premiered at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival. Nick and Stacey then went on to screen in eight more festivals as well as IFP Buzz Cuts. Nick and Stacey was the first story shot for his feature film ROOM 314 which he wrote, directed and produced twice as a play before making it into a feature film. Room 314, has so far been accepted into 9 film festivals and had a week long Theatrical Run at The Pioneer Theater in NYC where it received great reviews from The New York Times, Variety, New York Press and other publications. Most recently, he directed his second feature film, ONE NIGHT, in the summer of 2006 in NYC, a screenplay he also wrote. Michael studied with and has been heavily influenced by the award winning filmmaker Tom Noonan. Michael’s other recent writing credits include: CHARACTERS, which starred Lukas Haas and Sara Foster, and ARGO which he co-wrote and co-directed alongside Jordan Bayne and starred Jordana Spiro (Must Love Dogs) and Marcus Chait (Million Dollar Baby).
As an actor Michael has appeared on the award winning HBO series Sex & the City as Marathon Man and on an award winning episode of Law & Order SVU as Artie Felton. He has also appeared on Guiding Light, As the World Turns and All My Children. More recent film credits include award-winning feature films such as POINT & SHOOT, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, screened at the Hamptons International Film Festival, and won the Audience Award at the Cinema Paradise Film Festival. WALKING ON THE SKY, another film Michael worked on recently, won best Dramatic Feature at the New York International Film & Video Festival (LA) and had a limited theatrical release in September 2005. In the summer of 2006, Michael had a role in THE BABYSITTERS, starring Cynthia Nixon and John Leguizamo.
Michael will be shooting his third feature film, NICK & STACEY, in the winter of 2008.
As an actor Michael has appeared on the award winning HBO series Sex & the City as Marathon Man and on an award winning episode of Law & Order SVU as Artie Felton. He has also appeared on Guiding Light, As the World Turns and All My Children. More recent film credits include award-winning feature films such as POINT & SHOOT, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, screened at the Hamptons International Film Festival, and won the Audience Award at the Cinema Paradise Film Festival. WALKING ON THE SKY, another film Michael worked on recently, won best Dramatic Feature at the New York International Film & Video Festival (LA) and had a limited theatrical release in September 2005. In the summer of 2006, Michael had a role in THE BABYSITTERS, starring Cynthia Nixon and John Leguizamo.
Michael will be shooting his third feature film, NICK & STACEY, in the winter of 2008.
Lindstrom, Lisa
producer and educator- worked for 13 years as Senior Vice President of Feature Film Development and Production for The Avnet/Kerner Company. Lisa's last project with Avnet was the NBC/Warner Brothers mini-series, Uprising, on which she served as Co-Executive Producer. One of her first successes was the film Fried Green Tomatoes which, as Co-Producer, she helped nurture from development through production. She also co-produced Red Corner, Up Close and Personal, and The War. In the television arena, she served as Producer on the CBS mini-series Mama Flora's Family and Associate Producer on Heat Wave. Lisa has always been interested in the voices of emerging talent and was happy to be a Producer on writer/director Rodrigo Garcia's first film Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her. In Los Angeles, she worked with The Unusual Suspects Theatre Company, teaching at-risk and incarcerated youth to collaboratively write and perform their own plays. She has also taught playwriting at the Virginia Avenue Project and been a Resident Teaching Artist with Theatre for a New Audience's New Voices Program in the New York City school system. Last year she led theatre workshops for tsunami and war affected young people in Sri Lanka through the Center for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation. She is currently facilitating several youth theatre workshops through the Arts Network of the Brooklyn College Community Partnership. Lisa has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and a MFA in Directing from Carnegie-Mellon University. She recently completed her Graduate Certificate degree in Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding for the School for International Training in Vermont.
Moss, Robb
independent non-fiction filmmaker- whose recent film, The Same River Twice, premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, followed by more than 25 festivals worldwide, including Berlin, Rio, San Francisco, and Munich. Nominated for a 2004 Independent Spirit award, the film premiered theatrically at New York's Film Forum and played theatrically in more than seventy cities across North America. He has twice won NEA/AFI grants for personal work, a NEH grant to film rituals in West Africa, and, as a cinematographer, has shot films in Turkey, Greece, Ethiopia, Japan, Liberia, The Gambia, and Nicaragua. As a director, Moss's other films have shown at the Telluride Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, and at festivals around the world, including in Holland, Russia, France, and Australia. Elected by the national membership three times to the board of directors, Moss is the former Board Chair and President of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers. He has won the Joseph R. Levenson Award for undergraduate teaching at Harvard University, where he has taught for the past fifteen years, and was on the 2004 Documentary Jury for the Sundance Film Festival.
