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Maria Stanisheva

Maria Stanisheva is a film director/producer and founder of ANIMADOCS (www.animadocs.com) . She focuses on social-issue documentaries, independent animation and experimenting with mixed genres. The animated-documentary FATHER which she produced in 2012 was screened at over 100 film festivals and awarded 28 times, including the Golden Dove for Animated Film at DOK Leipzig Festival. Her 2016 animated campaign “Together to End Male Guardianship” commissioned by Human Rights Watch Saudi Arabia, was seen by over 10 million people, brought factual legislative change to the country and got featured in the New York Times and Euronews. She is currently working on Finding Home – an animated documentary series and interactive art installation that tell the stories of climate refugees from around the world.

Maria has worked as an external expert for the Robert Bosch Foundation (Berlinale film festival), Documentary Campus Masterschool (CPH:DOX, Sheffield Doc Fest), NEW INC (NEW MUSEUM, NYC) and EURIMAGES. She gives regular master-classes in “Animation for Documentary Film“ at NYFA, Oxford Brookes and the Central European University (Vienna). In addition, she does Pitch trainings based on personal experience presenting projects at Berlinale, Stuttgart Film Fest, Clermont Ferrand, Hot Docs, Sunny Side of the Doc, IDFA etc.

Liz Stanton Acting for Film Instructor

Liz Stanton teaches Acting (Meisner), Voice & Movement, and Improvisation at the New York Film Academy. As an actor, singer, sound designer, composer, director, and teacher, she is a multifaceted theatre artist. She is the Theatrical Development Producer for Convergences Theatre Collective. She has performed in numerous professional productions in New York City, regionally and internationally (England and India). Her opera, based on The Bacchae, was featured as a work in development at the EstroGenius Festival. She has created award-winning devised theatre pieces, composes music for theatrical sound designs, and teaches physically embodied acting and voice. Liz received her MFA in Theatre: Contemporary Performance from Naropa University. One of her most recent projects is The Woman Who Was Me – a play for one woman. The show was nominated for five Innovative Theatre Awards, including for Outstanding Solo Performer.

Carol Stanzione Acting for Film Instructor

BFA in Acting, New York University Tisch School Of the Arts/Strasberg Institute. Acting credits include “Orange Is The New Black”, “Side Effects”, “Deliver Us From Evil”, Eminem’s “Stan” music video and the west coast premiere of “The Manchurian Candidate”, as well as many radio commercials and animated series. Has cast, directed and produced over 200 voiceovers for TV, film and radio.

Micah Stathis Acting for Film Instructor

Stathis was a Production Manager for Manhattan Neighborhood Network for over four years. He quickly expanded his skills as a freelance Cinematographer and Director. He has experience directing a wide variety of television and film shoots, commercials, music videos, narrative films, documentary films, and live events.

Riley Steiner Acting for Film Instructor

Riley joined NYFA in 2014 and teaches all levels of Technique and Scene Study, specializing in Acting Styles and Shakespeare.

Her stage work includes Ophelia in Sir Anthony Hopkins’ production of Hamlet on the HB Studio stage in New York. Riley worked as a voice actor alongside Tom Hanks in Toy Story, and can be heard screaming “I GOT HIS SWEATBAND!” in Disney’s Hercules. She is also remembered as the fatally doomed Page Bowen on General Hospital.

As a playwright, two of her plays have been included in the Plays in Progress Series at the award winning Utah Shakespearean festival. Her first play, Tumcumcari has enjoyed three productions in Los Angeles. She directed the play in 2014 at the Whitemore Theatre in North Hollywood.

She has directed a handfull of Shakespeare plays at NYFA and participates as a guest director in The Road Theatre Company’s Summer Playwrights festival.

She studied acting with Uta Hagen for over ten years and now teaches her methodology. In 2010, Riley went back to school to complete her education. In 2014, she graduated cum laude with a BA in Theatre and an MFA in Shakespeare and Renaissance Studies , both at Mary Baldwin University in Staunton, VA.

Jenny Sterner Associate Chair of Film Arts Department (Screenwriting)

MFA in Screenwriting, New York Film Academy.
Jenny has developed a manga for Seven Seas Entertainment. She is the creator of the web series Searching for Eden. She served as Coordinator of the Screenwriting Department for five years before taking over as Associate Chair. She teaches Story Generation and Building & Researching Your World for the Department.

Tyler Stillwill

Tyler is a teacher and an interdisciplinary artist from Los Angeles who performs (in an actory, singery and musiciany way), composes, writes, clowns, directs, paints, illustrates, sculpts and makes music. They’ve had plays and musicals produced in small theaters in Detroit, Austin, Chicago, Seattle and Off Off Off Broadway. A one time Children’s Theatre Artistic Director, International Marketing Executive, College Professor and Tattoo Artist. Featured in the web series “Staying Together” (https://vimeo.com/317707828), they’ve ridden their bicycle up and down mountains all over the world, but only ever mistaken for a criminal in Japan. But that’s a story for another time.

Glenn Storm

Glenn is a game designer and programmer with experience bringing many games to market, including Sonic The Hedgehog and Star Wars: The Clone Wars for the LeapFrog, Didj handheld console; which took Children’s Technology Review: Editor’s Choice Award in 2008. His game work draws upon ten years’ experience as an animator at Warner Brothers Feature Animation, Dreamworks Feature Animation, and other firms. During that time he worked on the films: The Iron Giant, Osmosis Jones and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.

Evan Stulc

Evan has worked as camera assistant on features, commercials and music videos, for clients clients including Toyota, Riot Games, and Yahoo! His credits include Bad Milo, As I Lay Dying, and Helio.

Luisa Ibanez Suarez

Luisa Ibañez is a P.G.A Senior Content Film and TV Producer and member of The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. She has more than twenty-five years of experience in the US and LATAM media industry, including an overall of 1000 hours of content produced in different formats for diverse audiences and three International Emmy nominations for projects premiered on the US primetime. From this journey, she understands the expectations of diverse audiences in Latin America, Spain and Latinos in the US. Credits as Development Producer, Line Producer, and Supervising Producer on the successful Hispanic TV Series and telenovelas from NBC Telemundo, Univision, Televisa, and Movistar prove her high-quality deliveries in projects distributed in more than 100 countries and over 35 languages.

Melissa Sullivan Acting for Film Instructor

Melissa Sullivan received her B. F. A. in Theater at Cal Arts and is a Lifetime Member of the Actors Studio. Sullivan has worked extensively in film, television and theater as an actor and producer. Film credits include, Finding Red Cloud, Sweet Underground, S.F.W. and Poker Face. TV credits include, Shameless, Hawthorne, Dragnet and E.R.

Sullivan’s theater credits include, Stella in Streetcar Named Desire, winning her the LA Ticket Holders Best Supporting Actress Award, Veronica in The Interview, in which the LA Times called her a “mesmerizing performer”, The Girl in Mr. Paradise, Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Mary Jane in The Dead, Miss Julie in Miss Julie, Karin in The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant, Marta in Waiting for the Parade, Katrin in Mother Courage and Her Children, and many more.

Sullivan was production designer and producer of the feature, Roommate Wanted, which played at Salem Horror Film Festival, Bahamas International Film Festival and Shriekfest, with distribution by Indican Pictures. She produced and starred in the web series, The Millionaires on Amazon Prime. Sullivan is a singer-songwriter with a debut album, Late Last Night, Apple Music/Spotify. She performs regularly at the renown, The Hotel Café’.

Shawn Sullivan

Shawn has been the post-production supervisor for the NYFA’s New York City and Los Angeles campuses, and was the director of the NYFA summer workshop at Walt Disney World. He has worked as an editor on short film, commercials, marketing videos, and feature films, with clients including Redken, Keller Williams, Exit Realty, Caldwell Banker, and Disney. In 2014, Disney presented Shawn with a Mousecar (Disney’s version of an Oscar) for 10 years of working with Disney Youth Program and NYFA. Shawn previously worked for Apple teaching film editing software. He is Final Cut Pro Certified by Apple. He is also an Avid Certified Instructor with the Media Composer film editing software. BA, Screenwriting: California State University Northridge

Andrea Swift Chair of Filmmaking

A cinematic storyteller with more than 20 years experience, Swift has served as executive producer and director of PBS’ Emmy-nominated documentary series, In the Life. Her films have screened at the United Nations Earth Summit and festivals worldwide, including Berlin International Film Festival (Best Short Film), Raindance Film Festival (Best of Festival Selection), CIFF, and Chicago International Film Festival (Silver). She has created content for AMC, History, WE, the NY Knicks and Madison Square Garden; and has directed and written for top talent including Oscar winner Susan Saradon, nominees Laura Linney, Patricia Clarkson, and Lesley Gore, and Tony Award and Emmy Award winners including Alan Cumming, Ossie Davis, Harvey Fierstein, Cherry Jones, Denis O’Hare, and RuPaul. Currently, Swift focuses on writing, story producing, and creative consulting. MFA, Columbia University.

Dr. Maureen Tabor

Maureen’s background is rich and varied. She earned a PhD in Sociology from Yale University after an MA and BA from the University of Michigan. She landed her first teaching job at UCBerkeley, upon which time she vowed to remain in California. After teaching 3 years at UCB, she joined a theater group where she thrived for over 10 years. That took her to New York and then back to California, this time to Hollywood. She taught acting in Hollywood but then took a few studio corporate jobs. In the early 2000s she returned to academia, teaching at Cal State LA and finally settling into film schools in Los Angeles when she enjoys working with creative students in their study of social science.

Angelina Tala

Angelina is a professional writer, motion picture/theatre instructor, and published journalist with TEFL/TESOL experience, both domestically and abroad. Outside of NYFA, Angelina is a Narrative Designer for G5 Entertainment, a leading developer and publisher of mobile games. And she continues to work on her creative portfolio as a screenwriter. Angelina earned an MFA in Screenwriting at the New York Film Academy, Los Angeles, and a BA in Journalism at Brooklyn College, New York, with a minor in Television and Radio and a concentration in Photography from the Art Institute of Florence, Italy.

Graham Tallman

Graham is a writer/director whose films have been to over 100 festivals, have won numerous awards, and have gained distribution. As a writer, he has a script on the Black List, he has adapted a comic book for 20th Century Fox, and collaborated with companies such as Point Grey (Seth Rogen), Dark Castle (Joel Silver), and producers such as Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story) and Vertigo Entertainment (It, The Lego Movie). He wrote and directed the feature film Creeper, and was the second unit director for the film The Nevsky Prospect for Amazon Studios (which he also produced). As an assistant director, Graham worked on such films as The Virgin Suicides (Sophia Coppola), and Driven with Sylvester Stallone. He has also been a Story Analyst for Amazon Studios where he read and analyzed over 300 screenplays. He most recently pitched an adaptation of a novel to Netflix, and is currently writing his first pilot, as well as hosting Simulation Nation, a podcast that takes place in virtual reality.

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