NYFA
Faculty Directory

Faculty Directory

David Robinette Associate Chair of Acting for Film

MA in Performance Theory/Playwriting, California State University, Northridge and BA in English/Creative Writing, Hunter College. Television actor with appearances on “The Young and the Restless,” “Law & Order,” “As the World Turns,” and “All My Children.” Film role in “Cry Funny Happy,” Official Selection at Sundance.

Christopher Rossiter, CSI

Christopher’s cinematography credits include the period war series “Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed” starring Peter O’Meara and Martin Sheen, the Arleen Sorkin series “How to Marry a Billionaire” and numerous commercials such as the “I Love New York” campaign. He has worked under many notable cinematographers such as Fred Goodich, ASC; Tom Houghton, ASC; Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC; to name a few.

In addition to being a cinematographer ranked member of the International Cinematographers Guild (ICG), Christopher was recently accepted into the Colorist Society International (CSI) for his work as a colorist. His most notable credits are “Iconic Vision: John Parkinson Architect of Los Angeles” that premiered at the Newport Beach Film Festival and was EMMY nominated after airing on PBS in 2019, the documentary “The Art and Times of Frosty Myers” that also aired on PBS, a series for “La Palma Magazine: Niki Koss Fashion Story”, the feature film “Brahmin Bulls” starring Mary Steenburgen and “Hollyweird”.

For many years Christopher worked as a key grip and gaffer for union and non-union productions. Some highlights include Jon Favreau’s “Dinner for Five”, Ming Tsai’s series “East Meets West”, Yahoo Music video series, Dale Pon Advertising for Oxygen and Spike TV campaigns, Fedora Chocolate campaign, Apple Computers, and photographer Annie Leibovitz for Vogue Magazine.

Christopher is a graduate of the American Film Institute Conservatory where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Cinematography. He is also a Cinematography peer group member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Christopher has taught cinematography at many programs including New York Film Academy, and his alma mater, the American Film Institute.

In 2023, his work was nominated and selected for honorable mention at the International Color Award.

Amanda Rowan Parker

Rowan has received numerous accolades, including The Women’s International Study Center Fellowship 2021, Curator Award 2019, from Photo District News (P.D.N.), Photographer of the Year 2018 from the International Chromatic Photography association, and the Tokyo International Award for Photography in 2019.

Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Carrie Able Gallery, Photo LA, Photo London, Art Basel, The Wall Street Gallery, and The Leica Gallery in Los Angeles. Her images hang in the permanent collection at The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas with Damien Hirst, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Takashi Murakami. Her images are included in the permanent collection at the ACEQUIA MADRE Museum, Santa Fe, NM.

Originally from the Bay area, the daughter of Bluegrass Legend Peter Rowan, she began shooting rock concerts during high school. Her distinctive visual style has translated into advertising campaigns for clients, including Disney, NBC, and HBO. Her editorial portraits include global artists, performers, and pop celebrities alike.

Rowan graduated Cum Laude from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She resided in New York City for several years appearing as an actress in film and TV such as “Law and Order”, the “Chappelle Show” with Dave Chappelle, and National Lampoon’s “Pledge This!” co-starring with Paris Hilton. She performed several roles on Broadway including Curles’s wife in “Of Mice and Men.” Her creative practice combines an investigation of her experience as an actress and her visual prowess as a commercial photographer. Her work investigates ideas of the female body in the media and its intersection with contemporary visual content creation and reproductive politics. Rowan now lives in Los Angeles, working within the genres of photography and performance art. Rowan is currently a Full-Time Faculty at the Photo Arts Conservatory at the New York Film Academy Los Angeles in both the MFA and BFA programs.

James Rowe

James first stepped onto a film set at 18 as a British Red Coat in Michael Mann’s epic adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans, shooting outside his home town of Asheville, NC. That fall he entered UNC-Chapel Hill, where he would write and direct the jazz-inspired short film Sax Man. The short was purchased by PBS for their Southern Visions series and James was invited to join the American Film Institute as a Directing Fellow.
While at AFI, he optioned his first feature screenplay to Oliver Stone’s Illusion Entertainment. The resulting film, Blue Ridge Fall — starring Peter Facinelli (Twilight, Nurse Jackie) and Academy Award nominee Amy Irving (Traffic, Zero Hour) — was directed by James and released by HBO. It played the Los Angeles Film Festival, Austin Film Festival and Cine de Mar del Plata, Argentina, among others, and was given prominent placement on the Blockbuster Movie Awards.
“A taut drama,” proclaimed Film Threat, “extolling the bonds of friendship as well as the fragility and vulnerability of futures we wrongly assume are set in stone.”
James has since led filmmaking workshops for professionals around the world and continues to create in Los Angeles, as a screenwriter, director and educator.

Natasha Rudenko

Natasha Rudenko is a photographer and an educator, and has exhibited her work internationally. Her work was part of a few group shows in New York, Los Angeles, Moscow, Budapest and some others as well as a few annual publications of feminist and queer art, including Issues II and Femme Fotale Volume III Analog and Femme Fotale Volume IV Leafless.

In her work Rudenko interprets her personal experience as a human being. She addresses self-reflection and investigates the realm of her feelings and emotions. Through being honest and personal she aims to make people relate to the ideas explored in her work and provoke their own self-reflection. Rudenko also believes art education can change the world and make it a better place. MFA, New York Film Academy.

Crickett Rumley

The founder and Senior Director of the New York Film Academy’s Film Festival Department, Crickett Rumley received her MFA in Film at Columbia University. She has guided filmmakers to official selections and awards at festivals ranging from Sundance to Bronzelens and to nomination and shortlisting for the Student Academy Awards, the BAFTA Student Film Awards, and the College Television Awards.

Crickett has moderated both live and virtual events for the school, including Q&A’s with NYFA alum Mohamed Diab (director of Marvel Studios/Disney+ series Moon Knight) and TV writers Boo Killebrew and Gail Lerner as well as panels with staff from festivals such as New Filmmakers LA, Hollyshorts, Austin, and Reel Sisters of the Diaspora. Most recently, she hosted the Winter Film Awards International Film Festival’s Education Day on the NYFA campus in New York, presenting workshops on “Social Media for Creatives” and “How to Craft the Low Budget Screen Story”.

A regular juror for the Forum on Life, Culture, and Society’s International Short Film Competition, Crickett also sat on the jury for the 2021 Tallgrass Film Festival, one of MovieMaker Magazine’s 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee. She now serves as their Panels Director.

Paul J. Salamoff

Paul J. Salamoff has been working for over 30 years in Film, TV, Video Games and Commercials as a Writer, Producer, Director, Executive, Comic Creator, Storyboard Artist and Make-Up FX Artist. He was recently named one of The Tracking Board’s Top 100 up & coming Screenwriters and has developed projects with Mosaic Media Group, Hollywood Gang, Blumhouse, Wigram Productions, Silver Pictures, Valhalla Motion Pictures, Vertigo and Eclectic Pictures. Salamoff is the author of On The Set: The Hidden Rules of Movie Making Etiquette (Now in its 4th Edition) and the graphic novels Discord, Tales of Discord, Hired Guns, Logan’s Run and issues of Vincent Price Presents. His short stories and essays have been included in acclaimed anthologies including Midian Unmade: Tales From Clive Barker’s Nightbreed and The Cyberpunk Nexus: Exploring The Blade Runner Universe and he is a two-time Bram Stoker Award Nominee. Salamoff made his feature-film directorial debut with Encounter, a multi award-winning Sci-Fi/Drama based on his original screenplay that stars Luke Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Cheryl Texiera and Tom Atkins. Encounter won “Best Independent Film” at The 46th Annual SATURN Awards. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, he teaches Online Screenwriting, Genre Studies, Sequential Art, Script To Screen, and Feature Workshops.

Dr. Mary Samuelson Dean of General Education; Chair of Liberal Arts & Sciences

Dr. Mary Samuelson received her Ph.D. and MA degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and completed her undergraduate work in Cinema-Television and English Literature at the University of Southern California (USC). For the past four years, Mary has taught courses and advised students in the Cinema and Media Studies and Writing Programs departments at UCLA, the Cinema-Television department at Los Angeles Community College (LACC), and here at the New York Film Academy (NYFA). Her essays “Radical Moment: The National Recovery Administration and Hollywood’s ‘New Deal’” and “Wartime News Flow: Government and Studio Newsreels, 1941-1945” will come out in collections focusing on film and the law (September 2016) and the U.S. newsfilm (June 2016), respectively. Mary’s dissertation “The Patriotic Play: Roosevelt, Antitrust, and the War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry” is slated for book publication in Spring 2017.

Michael Sandoval

MFA, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts; MFA, University of Michigan, Writing Program; BA, Brown University.

Films have appeared in Berlin Film Festival, Palm Springs, Slamdance, Toronto Short Film Festival, Margaret Meade Doc Festival, and more. Director of The Good Son (competition screening, Berlin); Ariana (Audience Award, San Luis Obispo Film Festival). Cinematographer/producing consultant for numerous film/TV productions, including feature documentary, Horizontes sin Dueño and “The Encounter” (Best Short, Las Palmas). Awarded Ang Lee Fellowship. Published fiction/non-fiction. Residency Grants include Ucross Foundation, the Santa Fe Art Institute.

Boris Schaarschmidt

Boris Schaarschmidt is a director, producer, and writer with 15 well-recognized short films under his belt. Each of his films has won numerous awards at film festivals around the world. Boris holds a BFA in cinematography from the University of Applied Sciences in Dortmund, Germany, and a MFA in directing from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. He has been awarded several prestigious scholarships and awards, among them the German Academic Exchange Service Scholarship (DAAD), and the Pat Hitchcock O’Connell Scholarship Award.

Throughout his career, Boris has worked with well-accomplished and recognized professionals in the film industry, among them German director Romuald Karmaker and Quentin Tarantino, for whom Boris worked on the post-production of “Inglorious Bastards.” Following the success of his short film “Haleema,” Boris went to Iceland for a three-month artist residency and shot the experimental film “Eldur a Himni” about the Northern Lights.

Michael Selditch

Michael Selditch is a veteran documentary filmmaker. In non-scripted television, he’s been a creator, showrunner, producer and director, earning him two Emmy nominations. His four-part series, “American Style” aired primetime on CNN. His documentary series, “Architecture School” for the Sundance Channel, won the IDA Award for Best Limited Series and was named in Time Magazine’s List Issue as one of the Top 10 Television Series of 2008. He was a director on the original “Queer Eye,” and showran a season of “Catfish: the TV Show.” Selditch has produced for many networks and streamers on a multitude of topics.

Selditch’s narrative film debut, “Fixing Frank” was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. His follow-up documentary, “Eleven Minutes,” played in theaters in eight cities. His new feature documentary, “Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field” is having its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival, 2023. He’s in development on his fourth film with a script he penned called, “In Burton’s Shadow,” based on a true story with Jared Harris and Alan Cumming attached.

Before his work in film and television, Selditch was a licensed architect, practicing architecture for 14 years in New York and Los Angeles, and teaching at Pratt Institute and Woodbury University.

Jerry Shandy

MFA in Screenwriting, USC
Jerry is a writer-producer who has credits on such television series as Batwoman, Dominion, and Perception. In addition, he’s sold numerous pilots and feature film scripts. Jerry has taught at NYFA, both in the United States and abroad, across multiple departments, including Screenwriting, Producing, Filmmaking, and Acting. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, he teaches TV Workshops, Feature Workshops, Business of Screenwriting, and Online Screenwriting

Jan Epstein Schwaid

BFA in Writing for Screen and Television, USC/Cinema-Television
Jan has written for 15 years across games, podcasts, marketing, and short films. She wrote games for Aeria Games & Entertainment, PlayNext Inc, and Kayat Games/Singta Games. She was the head writer on Nosh: Bite Size Adventures, an animated children’s cooking show. Wrote the short film The Noodle Man, which is streaming on Amazon Prime. Has written for Glamour.com and Fox Digital. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, she teaches Podcasting, and Story Generation.

Tony Schwartz

Tony began working in the film industry in 1986. He spent most of his career in production working as an assistant director and line producer in both feature films and network television. He has been a part of many critically acclaimed films and series, including One False Move, Freaks and Geeks, Firefly, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, and The Unit. Along the way, he has worked with luminaries such as Carl Reiner, David Mamet, Dan Petrie, Sr., Judd Apatow, Joss Whedon, Carl Franklin, and many others. Since leaving production in 2011, he has continued to develop original content with Kohler Schwartz Productions. He is currently working on a bio-pic about AIDS activist Marty Delaney.

Gilbert Shilton

GILBERT SHILTON

I have been working in the film and television industry for over forty years. In the course of my career I’ve worked on just about every discipline from crew technician to assistant director to cameraman to a three year stint as a television, film and theatre actor ultimately culminating in a multi decade writing and directing career in film and television.

In 1980, I began my freelance directing career shooting prime time network episodic television programs, pilots and mini series. In 1985 I sold my first network writing assignment. Since then I’ve has logged close to three hundred hours directing film and television, my directing assignments taking me all over the English speaking world.

In the process, I’ve garnered numerous award nominations sold both film and episodic screenplays to the major networks, production companies and studios.

In the last twelve years I’ve worked as a College lecturer/instructor with MFA film and television graduates. I’ve also worked international workshops and full semesters in Canada, France, Russia, Turkey, Qatar as well as throughout the United States.

Dr. Shlomo Sher

Shlomo is a Philosophy professor and professional ethics workshop facilitator committed to encouraging critical and ethical self-reflection in his students. He as a passion for practical ethical issues, which he seeks to extend to others both in and out of the classroom. He began his development as an educator as a trainer at the USC Marshall School of Business’s groundbreaking Experiential Learning Center. From 2003-2009. There he facilitated workshops on topics such as organizational communication, group decision-making, power dynamics, and cultural sensitivity. In 2007 he was asked by the center to apply my ethics expertise to such workshops, and in the next two years developed several multimedia-driven business ethics training workshops that have since been used by MBAs, undergraduates, and even high school students. From 2009 to 2011, he was a Fellow at the USC Levan Institute of Humanities and Ethics, where he became involved in the Institute’s events and projects aimed at engaging USC’s students, faculty, and staff with a wide range of ethical issues. Central to his pedagogical approach is the recognition that every single person cares about ethical questions, though they may not realize this or may lack the education necessary to clearly articulate and critically evaluate their beliefs. I has appeared as speaker in a variety of venues including ABC’s Lost and Fox’s Fringe. Education: USC, PhD, University of Warwick, MA, UCLA, BA.

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