NYFA
Faculty Directory

Faculty Directory

Cathy Giannone Russo Acting for Film Instructor

BFA from Strasberg Institute at NYU. Lifetime member of Actors Studio. Has taught at Artist Theatre Group and Third Street Theatre. Recipient of two Drama Circle Awards and four DramaLogue Awards. Cathy Giannone is known for her work on The Bogus Witch Project, CB4 and The Little Rascals Save the Day.

Maria Gobetti Acting for Film Instructor

MA and BA in Theatre, UCLA. Artistic Co-Director at The Victory Theatre Center, with over 80 directing credits. Maria directed the critic’s choice world premieres of Jon Klein’s Suggestibility and Wishing Well. She also directed and produced the critic’s choice production of David Mamet’s Oleanna; the world premieres of American Iliad by Donald Freed. Maria was the 1992 recipient of Women in Theatre’s Outstanding Achievement In Theatre Award.

Lynda Goodfriend Creative Director of Acting for Film

Creative Director

Lynda received her BFA from Southern Methodist University. She has also studied with the legends, Lee Strasberg and Sandy Meisner. Lynda is a veteran of both Broadway and Off-Broadway productions appearing in shows such as Good News, West Side Story, She Loves Me, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Boyfriend. She was a series regular on the iconic hit television show “Happy Days,” and on the series “Who’s Watching the Kids,”and “Blanksy’s Beauties.” She guest starred on shows such as Love Boat, Fantasy Island and Vegas. She has also appeared in feature films such as “Pretty Woman,” “Taxi Driver,” “The Front,” “Beaches,” and “Nothing in Common.” Lynda was owner and principle instructor of the Actors Workout School for 15 years with locations in both Los Angeles and Orange County. Her theatre, the Actors Workout Theatre in NoHo, won numerous awards for its theatrical productions. She has also directed for television and film including a Disney pilot and the television movie Four Stars. Lynda opened her management company in 1983 and developed many actors’ careers until she became Chair of the Acting Department for NYFA in Los Angeles in 2011.

Lee Gordon

MFA in Screenwriting, AFI. With over a decade of industry experience, companies such as Disney and Warner Brothers have trusted Lee Gordon for his writing expertise. Having worked as a screenwriter and story consultant, Lee’s talents have taken him into adventurous corners of Hollywood. He was field producer for the scrappy indie documentary, Undefeated, which won the 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; writer for the Jean Claude Carriere Lifetime Achievement Award production for the Oscars narrated by Jeremy Irons; and has helped write several award-winning trailers.

Brandii Grace

Development positions at Microsoft Game Studios, Monolith Productions (Warner Brothers), Renaissance Games, Amaze Entertainment (working on Call of Duty: Roads to Victory, and Shrek the Third), and Hidden Path Entertainment. Teaching experience at Digipen Institute of Technology. Community leader at International Game Developers Associations. Education: Western Washington University, Computer Science

Miraj Grbic Acting for Film Instructor

Miraj Grbic is a Film, TV & Theater actor with more than 60 films and TV Shows including Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, The Hunting Party, Fast & Furious, Babylon, American Horror Story, SWAT, Santa Clarita Diet etc… He studied Acting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo and got his MA in Acting. He started working on Films and on the main stage of the National Theater Sarajevo in the late 90s. He worked on Films and TV shows in US, Bosnian, Croatian, Turkish, German, Australian, Irish and Italian productions while starring on TV Shows and in Theater for more than two decades in plays from Shakespeare, Chekhov, Moliere, Camus and many others. Miraj is currently filming a studio feature film and is teaching Acting for Film and Business of Acting at the New York Film Academy Los Angeles.

Rick Greenwood

As a writer, director, producer and cinematographer his works have appeared in over 50 film festivals and earned 13 awards. Currently in pre-production for his directorial feature debut with Therapy Pictures. MFA in Filmmaking, New York Film Academy; BFA in Fine Art, University at Albany, NY.

Andrew Gross

Manhattan School of Music; USC. Andrew has composed original scores and licensed his music to hundreds of features and episodes of TV. Scoring credits include: Bio-Dome (MGM), The King of Queens (CBS/Sony), and Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (New Line). His music has been licensed across all media, including: American Idol (ABC), So You Think You Can Dance (Fox), Nacho Libre (Paramount) and Ratatouille (theatrical trailer, Disney). Recent credits include scoring and music supervision on the Emmy nominated, Why We Fight (Verizon GO90) and the upcoming comedy series, The Dress Up Gang (TBS). Andrew has received 4 BMI TV Music Awards.

Israel Gutierrez

Israel Gutierrez is a Mexican American filmmaker with a background in film and video editing. He worked as an editor at NBCUniversal for E! Entertainment International and Telemundo International. As a filmmaker, he recently won Best Film Screenplay (Mexican American Film Festival 2022) and Best Short Drama (Official Latino Film Festival 2022) for his multi award-winning historical drama They Call Us Sediciosos. Iz wrote, directed, and edited the short as a proof-of-concept for a feature film and TV series.

Mentored by Oscar-winning screenwriter David S. Ward and former DGA president and director Martha Coolidge, he is the recipient of the Panavision New Filmmaker Grant for the short he wrote and directed Sin Frontera, an immigration love story, which screened at the SAG Foundation, won numerous drama awards including official selections in Academy accredited festivals.

Andrew Hall

Andrew Hall has more than 30 years of experience working with such diverse elements as moving liquids, smoke and vapor, pure light and floating bubbles. Hall owns and runs the School of Light darkroom facility in DTLA. He teaches all of NYFA’s alternative processes and darkroom classes at his beautiful space in the Reef building in downtown Los Angeles. His clients include Kodak, IBM, Honda, BBC, Castrol, Infiniti, Lexus, Nokia, Nestle, L’Oreal. Awards won include The Association of Photographers Award, Communication Arts Annual Award, Graphic Photography Annual (Gold) Award, International Photography Awards, and Polaroid European Final Art Awards. His publications include Global Corporate Identity and The Art of Saying Hello.

Lonnie Halouska

MS, USC School of Cinema-Television; JD, Loyola University. Entertainment and telecommunications lawyer, negotiator and business manager for more than 20 years. Major studio and network background.

Denise Hamilton DEI Los Angeles Education Chair

Denise Hamilton has over 30 years experience as a writer and producer for NBC, ABC and PBS network specials and syndicated programs. In the area of documentary film she most recently was co-producer of BEING MICHELLE, a feature which won the 2022 Audience Award as Best Documentary at the Florida Film Festival, and presented at fourteen other festivals. Ms. Hamilton was writer and field producer for four internationally-shot documentaries, including “NGONE’S STORY: A Tale of Africa’s Orphans”, which aired on NBC affiliate stations; as well as the feature “Hollywood Musicals: Singing and Dancing” which screened at the Palm Springs Film Festival and as a 4-part series for PBS. She served as series producer of “Where Cultures Collide”, a 5-part web series for KCETLink, and was coordinating producer on “For Peace Sake”, the Emmy award-winning 2-hour NBC-TV special, as well as the “Motown 40: The Music is Forever” documentary special for ABC-TV. She has served on the awards selection committee of the International Documentary Association, and has taught documentary film production for Spelman College. For eighteen years Ms. Hamilton also served as co-chairperson of the Black Association of Documentary Filmmakers-West.

Jeff Hare

Jeff Hare has been writing and directing movies, television, television commercials and infomercials, corporate films and videos, and documentaries for over twenty-five years. His work is extremely diverse, and has been seen on movie screens worldwide, as well as television networks like Fox, American Movie Classics, Lifetime, LMN, MY NETWORK, Cartoon Network, and Discovery, to name a few.

Matt Harry

MFA in Film Production, USC
Matt has been telling stories since he was 10 years old. He spent his early years writing newspaper articles for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and one-act plays before discovering filmmaking at Ohio University. He graduated cum laude with a BS in Television Production. He moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and received an MFA in Film Production. As a screenwriter, Matt’s work has been recognized by the Austin Film Festival, the FOX/NYTVF Comedy Script Contest, Script Pipeline, the Launchpad Manuscript Contest, and the Nicholl Fellowships. His first produced feature screenplay, FUGUE, landed on several top-ten lists, won Best Horror Film at the Mississippi Film Festival, and was picked up for distribution by GoDigital. His short film SUPER KIDS, which he wrote and co-directed, has over 6 million views on YouTube. His TV pilot MONSTER COPS was awarded Grand Prize in the Second City Original Sitcom Contest, and is currently in development. Matt has also published four novels, written and directed an immersive play, and created a card game called You Are a Filmmaker. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, he teaches Thesis Workshop, Transmedia, Feature Workshops, Script To Screen, Unscripted Storytelling, Adaptation, and Genre Studies. For the Producing Department, he teaches Producing Reality TV.

Scott Hartmann

Scott Aaron Hartmann (Eastern Shawnee) is a filmmaker and storyteller, and proudly holds an MFA in film production with an emphasis on directing from Chapman University. Scott has written and directed a long list of short films, commercials and music videos. His independent short films have screened at festivals all over the world, garnering a number of awards. He has been fortunate enough to be able to direct many great performers, including Joseph Runningfox (“Geronimo,” “Ravenous”) and the late Misty Upham (“Frozen River,” “August: Osage County”). As a Los Angeles-based director, Scott continues to develop his own projects while also teaching directing and screenwriting to future filmmakers. Scott has also worked as a screenwriting consultant, with some student work accepted in the Oscars Library. Most recently, Scott he has served as the Academic Chair for the New York Film Academy campus in Abu Dhabi, teaching both filmmaking and screenwriting.

Richard Van Heertum Academic Advisor

Rich Van Heertum has been at NYFA since 2014 and has also taught at UCLA, CUNY, the Art Institute and Drexel. He earned a PhD in cultural studies and education from UCLA and an MA in Economics from SDSU. He has published four books – The Fate of Democracy in a Cynical Age, Educating the Global Citizen, Hollywood Exploited and The Selling of Bohemia – over 35 academic essays and chapters and hundreds of articles in the popular press on movies, music, politics and sports. His newest book, Challenges to Democracy in and Beyond Education, will be released by Routledge later this year.

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