Netflix has become an essential service now more than ever while most of the world stays indoors, and seemingly everyone watching Netflix is watching its latest original docuseries, Tiger King, co-edited by New York Film Academy (NYFA) Documentary Filmmaking alum Pedro Álvarez Gales.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is a true crime docuseries that explores a convicted criminal and flamboyant zoo owner and the larger world of big cat owners and enthusiasts that he inhabits. Over the course of seven episodes, co-directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin tell the story of Joseph Maldonado-Passage, aka “Joe Exotic,” who plotted the murder of Carole Baskin of Florida’s Big Cat Rescue.

The show has resonated with television viewers stuck at home due to self-isolation and quarantine, and in just its first three days of release Tiger King became one of the top 10 shows watched on the popular streaming service.

Documentaries typically involve a great deal more editing than narrative productions when factoring in all the raw footage that needs to be culled into a cohesive story. New York Film Academy Documentary Filmmaking alum Pedro Álvarez Gales was a perfect choice by the production to serve as co-editor. The talented young editor and director has worked on productions including Black Market with Michael K. Williams, King of the Road, Weediquette, and last year’s buzzworthy documentary FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.

Gales, who is originally from Caracas, Venezuela, first received his training at the NYFA Documentary Filmmaking school at our New York Campus in 2013. “Almost everything I do today I learned in NYFA,” Gales told us in an interview last year. “I had never touched any editing software until I went there. It was through NYFA I got my first job in New York too (Vice and Viceland) where I stayed for three years and went from being an assistant editor to junior editor.”

He adds, “The Documentary program can be a really intense one with long hours and days, but if you apply yourself and choose to absorb everything that’s coming your way you’ll leave that building a documentary filmmaker.”

New York Film Academy congratulates NYFA Documentary Filmmaking alum Pedro Álvarez Gales on the success of Tiger King and encourages everyone at home to check out the docuseries on Netflix!

New York Film Academy (NYFA) AFA Acting for FIlm alum Masali Baduza has landed one of the lead roles in BBC’s buzzworthy new adaptation of Noughts + Crosses.

Baduza originally hails from South Africa and is bilingual in both English and Xhosa, and earned her Associate Degree of Fine Arts in Acting for Film after enrolling at NYFA’s Burbank-based campus in Los Angeles in 2015. Since earning her AFA in Acting for Film, Baduza has appeared in the productions Bhai’s Cafe, The Fighter, and Trackers, before landing her biggest role yet in BBC’s Noughts + Crosses.

The television show is adapted from a series of young adult stories that began with the novel Noughts & Crosses, first published in 2001. The speculative fiction saga, written by Malorie Blackman, takes place in an alternate history where black Africans colonized and enslaved white Europeans, rather than the other way around. The story is told from the perspectives of two lead characters–Callum and Sephy

New York Film Academy (NYFA) MFA Filmmaking student Bruklyn Miller nabbed the top prize at the Wolfson CinemaSlam Production Grant Competition during the Miami Film Festival.

The Wolfson CinemaSlam Production Grant is run by the Miami Film Festival and is a competition that invites film students from all over Florida to submit projects that incorporate archival footage from the world-renowned Wolfson Moving Image Archives in Miami. Miller submitted her film Celestial for the competition and, when asked about incorporating the archival footage, remarked, “I knew how I wanted to use the archival footage the moment the opportunity was presented to us, however, I never planned on highlighting it as much as I did in the finished product.”

Miller, who is in her second year at New York Film Academy’s South Beach campus working toward her MFA in Filmmaking, says that Celestial is the reason she applied to New York Film Academy in the first place. “I found myself with, what I believed at the time, was a good script, but no idea on how to bring it to life,” she says. “New York Film Academy and CinemaSlam helped me do exactly that.” Celestial, Miller’s narrative short film, follows the uneasiness that stems from the stigma surrounding mental illness in the African American community.

Miller was selected as one of ten finalists by the Miami Film Festival before being awarded the $7,500 top prize for Celestial. “Becoming a finalist and winning the grand prize was surreal,” she adds. “I’m even more driven to improve as a writer and director and this grant also allows me to be fully funded for my next project, Sambo.”

Miller also received one of 15 “Works-In-Progress” grants, which are awarded by the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation. Other distinguished recipients of the grant included current MFA Filmmaking students at NYFA’s South Beach campus Steven Wieclaw, Annabel Inman, and BFA Filmmaking student Marcela Lugo.

New York Film Academy congratulates Bruklyn Miller on the success of her film Celestial and being awarded two grants, as well as Steven Wieclaw, Annabel Inman, and Marcela Lugo for receiving the Wolfson Family Foundation’s “Works-In-Progress” Grant.