As part of the African Black Film Festival 2014, New York Film Academy graduate and highly successful filmmaker, Rob Hardy, will be holding a Master Class at the SVA Theatre in New York City on Saturday, June 21st from 4:30pm- 6:30pm.
Rob Hardy, who is a 2014 NAACP Image Award nominee, broke into network television with his January 2007 directorial debut of the Emmy Award winning show ER. Soon after, Black Enterprise Magazine listed him among the Top 40 Entertainers under 40 for the year 2008. Since recently Executive Producing on Think Like A Man Too for Sony Pictures, Hardy has returned to television with directing stints on several shows including: Criminal Minds, Arrow, Castle, The Vampire Diaries, Bones, 90210, The Game, The Originals, Grey’s Anatomy, Being Mary Jane, Single Ladies, and Ravenswood.
Hardy began his career as a high school Senior, with the camcorder-shot movie G-Man. While pursuing a degree in Mechanical Engineering at Florida A & M University, he made the leap to film with the low-budget motion picture Chocolate City. This experience earned him the institution’s highest honor, the Bernard Hendricks Student Leadership Award, and launched his company Rainforest Films. The underground buzz on the project soon led to his controversial film Trois. Hardy not only directed and co-wrote the thriller, he was also instrumental in self-distributing the project to be the fastest Independent African American film to pass the $1 million dollar mark. In 2003, after directing the critically acclaimed thriller Pandora’s Box, he added the role of “Producer” to his credits by collaborating with business partner Will Packer, to produce several movies including: Three Can Play that Game, Puff Puff Pass and Motives. 2004 saw penning an “untitled Usher” project for MTV Films. Hardy then wrote and directed the spiritually themed drama entitled The Gospel, and produced the companion Gospel Live!. His hard-earned success has garnered a 2006 “Best Screenplay” (Black Movie Awards) nomination. He then Executive Produced Stomp The Yard, which held the #1 position at the box office for two weekends in January of 2007 and received the 2007 Movie of the Year Award from the BET Hip Hop awards and later directed it’s sequel Stomp the Yard: Homecoming. Later, he created the Sprite Step off TV series for MTV 2 that placed a fraternity step competition into the reality TV space. A documentary about Martin Luther King, Jr’s life as a fraternity member called AlphaMan: The Brotherhood of MLK, soon aired.
The Hollywood Reporter (December 2002) listed him amongst the New Establishment of Black Power Brokers. Florida A&M University awarded him with the Meritorious Achievement Award, which is the highest honor bestowed on an alumnus. After which he received the inaugural Woody Strode / Paul Robeson Award of Excellence from his fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
His company Rainforest Films, was listed as one of the Top 25 Money Makers in Entertainment (2007) by Black Enterprise Magazine and has gone on to produce feature films including: Ride Along, No Good Deed, This Christmas, Obsessed and Takers.
Additionally, Hardy has directed commercial projects for clients, including: CNN, TBS (Turner Broadcasting), American Honda, Coca-Cola, Georgia Lottery and The National Cancer Institute. He serves on the Advisory Board for the International Feature Project (IFP) Film Lab series. He resides in Atlanta, GA with his wife and two sons.