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 Performing Arts Department

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.

Prima Gonzalez Director, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

Prima has been teaching domestically and internationally for 15 years, including locations such as India, France, Morocco, and Costa Rica. She is a consistent presenter at TESOL conferences and holds the level chair position on the CATESOL Board of Directors. She has years of curriculum development experience and shaped the academics of The ESL School at NYFA. As a native Angeleno, one of her goals is to connect students with the community via volunteering and cultural events.

Lee Gordon Associate Chair of Film Arts Department (Filmmaking)

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.

Lizzie Gottlieb

Lizzie Gottlieb has been directing film and theater in New York for the last 25 years. Lizzie’s most recent film, Turn Every Page, is a documentary about the prickly, funny, wildly productive half-century collaboration between Lizzie’s father, the editor Robert Gottlieb, and the author Robert Caro (The Power Broker, The Years of Lyndon Johnson). Caro, 87, and Bob Gottlieb, 91, are in a race against time to finish their life’s work. The film premiered in June 2022 at the Tribeca Film Festival and has since played at dozens of festivals, winning several audience awards, was named one of the best five documentaries of the year by the National Board of Review, and has received rave reviews. The film was purchased by Sony Pictures Classics and is currently playing in theaters across the country.

Her first film, Today’s Man, about her brother, who is on the Autistic Spectrum, aired on PBS (Independent Lens). Her film Romeo Romeo, about a young lesbian couple on a quest to have a baby, was also on PBS (America Reframed) and won the NLGJA award for excellence in Documentary.

She founded and ran an Off-Broadway theater company dedicated to producing new plays at accessible prices. With that company, Pure Orange Productions, she produced and directed plays, including Keith Bunin’s The Principality of Sorrows^[4] with Robert Sean Leonard, David Lansbury, and Joanna Going; Marking by Patrick Breen, starring Peter Dinklage, Amy Ryan, Adina Porter, and Maria Tucci. Other productions included Jonathan Marc Sherman’s Evolution with Josh Hamilton and Peter Dinklage, Noel Coward’s Private Lives with Sara Ramirez, and Fifth Planet by David Auburn with Christina Kirk and Michael Ian Black. Gottlieb directed plays for Naked Angels, New York Stage and Film, malaparte, and Julliard.

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

Ben Granoff

Ben Granoff has worked in New York City for twenty years as a visual storyteller with production houses, animation studios, advertising agencies, publishers and museums. Since his teenage years, he has been teaching cartooning for after-school programs, summer camps, charter schools, and social service agencies. He has been helping NYFA students bring their imaginations to life since 2017.

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.

Dennis Green

Multi-decade professional actor/writer/producer. MFA, Yale School of Drama, Yale University; BFA, Wayne State University. Writer: Screenplays, works for theater, published essays and poetry. Fellow – Sundance Institute Screenwriters’ Intensive; The Hermitage Artist Retreat. Semi-Finalist – Austin Film Festival TV and Screenplay Competition. His theater work has been produced at Symphony Space, NYC; Performance Space 122; HERE Theatre; Nagleburg Theatre, CUNY; NY Int’l Fringe Festival; Minnesota Fringe Festival; and Dixon Place, NYC. Actor: His films include the horror classic Jacob’s Ladder, Forever Lulu, August the First (Hulu, Netflix, Showtime, Reel 13 on PBS); Somewhere in the Middle (Netflix, Amazon, over 20 national & international film festivals); The Sisters Karras; as well as the audio drama/podcast Harlem Queen (Apple, Spotify, Sticher).

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

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.

Dave Hanson Acting for Film Instructor

Dave Hanson is an internationally published and award winning playwright, television writer, actor, improvisor and comedian known for his work on Chelsea Lately, Inside Amy Schumer, Trainwreck and for his play Waiting For Waiting For Godot.
Originally from Seattle, Wa, Dave studied theatre at Whittier College, The Oxford School of Drama, and long form improv at UCB (LA/NY), IO West (LA) and The Second CIty LA.

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