Film Alumni
A-Z\ Z-A
('05SOA) -
Sameh Zoabi is a writer and director from Iksal, a small village in Israel. His feature debut, Man without a Cell Phone, was selected for the New Directors/New Films festival at MoMA and the Lincoln Center. His short film, “Be Quiet,” won third prize in the Cinéfondation Selection at the Cannes Film Festival. He has bachelor’s degrees in film studies and English literature from Tel Aviv University and attended the M.F.A. Film Program at Columbia on a merit scholarship.
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('89SOA) -
Alex Zamm has directed a number of films, including the Disney original features Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, My Date with the President’s Daughter, Inspector Gadget 2, The Pooch and the Pauper; the family comedy Dr. Dolittle: Million Dollar Mutts; the ABC Family Christmas special Snow; the children’s horror video R.L. Stein’s Haunting Hour: Don’t Think About It; and the comedy film Chairman of the Board.
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('09SOA) -
Lauren Wolkstein was born and raised in Baltimore, Md., by her mother, a schoolteacher, and her father, a colonel in the Air Force who served in several wars, including the Gulf War and the current Iraq War. Lauren received her BA in computer science from Duke University and won the Duke Undergraduate Filmmaker Award. Lauren lived in Los Angeles for a year assisting film producer Chris Hanley at Muse Productions ("The Virgin Suicides," "American Psycho," "Buffalo '66").
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('08SOA) -
Kaer Vanice is a producer whose latest film, David Garrett’s Ten Stories Tall, stars Ally Sheedy, Josh Hamilton, and Jim Gaffigan and won Best Screenplay at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. Vanice also produced the short films “High Street Plumbing,” which he also edited, and "Warlord," 2008 Grand Jury Prize winner at SXSW Film Festival and 2007 official selection at Rotterdam Film Festival.
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('04SOA) -
Sergio Umansky is a writer-director from Mexico City. His short film “Here Was the Anthem,” filmed in Mexico, won Best Drama at the Aspen Shortsfest, Best Student Short at the Woodstock Film Festival, the Milos Forman Finishing Fund Award, Second Place Student Live Action over 15 Minutes at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and Best Film at the Columbia University Film Festival. The film showed as part of the New Directors/New Films series at the Lincoln Center, as well as at prestigious film festivals such as Telluride, Sundance and Berlin.
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('06SOA) -
Chris Teague is a writer, director, cinematographer, and graduate of the MFA program in film at Columbia University. As a cinematographer, he has shot several feature-length documentaries and short films, such as Myna Joseph's Man, John Magary's The Second Line, and Fellipe Barbosa's Salt Kiss, all of which have played at Sundance. His films have also screened at the New York Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, and the Tribeca Film Festival.
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('95SOA) -
Award-winning director Patrick Stettner established himself with the independent drama The Business of Strangers, about two businesswomen who wreak revenge on a corporate headhunter assumed to have committed rape. Starring Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles, the film won the Special Jury Prize at the Paris Film Festival and the SKYY Prize at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Stettner earned recognition while at Columbia for his short film, “Flux,” featuring a powerful performance by Allison Janney.
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('99SOA) -
While at Columbia, Joan Stein won the Student Academy Award for Best Narrative Film and the Directors Guild of America’s Student Film Award for her thesis film, “One Day Crossing.” The short film, about a Hungarian Jewish woman who poses as a Christian to save her family during the Holocaust, was also nominated for an Academy Award in 2001 and chosen by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art for the New Directors/New Films series.
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('00SOA) -
Julia Solomonoff is a Argentine filmmaker. Her most recent feature film, El Ultimo Verano de la Boyita (The Last Summer of La Boyita) played at the Latin American Film Festival. The first feature that she wrote and directed, Hermanas (Sisters), opened at the Toronto Film Festival. She also has written and directed five short films, Octavo 51, A Day with Angela, Siesta, Scratch and Ahora—which have earned her prestigious awards from the DGA and FIPRESCI.
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('01SOA) -
Jeffrey Sharp is president and co-founder of Open Road Integrated Media, a New York-based digital content company that publishes and markets e-books. In producing a series of Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning films over the past 10 years, he has distinguished himself in recognizing opportunities to better integrate the publishing and film industries in creating critically acclaimed commercial entertainment.
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('08SOA) -
Florin Serban is a Romanian director whose first feature film, If I Want to Whistle I Whistle, won the Jury Grand Prix and the Alfred Bauer Prize for Innovation in Cinema at the Berlin Film Festival. The drama, which Serban directed and co-wrote with Catalin Mitulescu, chronicles the relationship of a prisoner on the verge of being released and his estranged mother.
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('88SOA) -
Malia Scotch Marmo is a screenwriter who has written a number of hit films, including Stephen Spielberg’s Hook, on which she shares writing credits with James V. Hart. She also served as an associate producer for the film, a Peter Pan story starring Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts, and Maggie Smith. She wrote Lasse Hallström’s first American film, Once Around, a romantic comedy-drama starring Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Danny Aiello, and Laura San Giacomo.
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('04SOA) -
Beth Schacter wrote and directed Normal Adolescent Behavior for New Line Cinemas. Starring Amber Tamblyn, the film premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. Schacter worked on the script at the 2004 IFP/LA screenwriters’ lab. She also cowrote Forget Me Nots for Emerging Pictures. Starring Vivian Wu and directed by Ann Hu, the film premiered at the 2005 LA Film Festival. Her journalism has appeared in Radar Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Latina Magazine, and The Huffington Post. Schacter is a graduate of the Columbia M.F.A.
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('03SOA) -
Patricia Riggen is a director and producer from Mexico, currently living and working in Los Angeles. Her first feature film, Under the Same Moon (La Misma Luna), tells the story of a mother who comes to the United States in search of a better life for herself and her young son, whom she must leave behind with his grandmother. The film stars renowned Mexican performers Eugenio Derbez and Kate del Castillo.
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SOA Alumna -
Television producer and writer Vanessa Reisen has worked on a number of hit shows. Most recently, she has worked as supervising producer and writer for Showtime’s Californication, starring David Duchovny. Before that, she served in a similar capacity for Weeds, another popular Showtime drama. She has also served as writer and producer for CBS’s Swingtown and ABC’s Traveler.
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('08SOA) -
Dmitry Povolotsky is a writer, director, and choreographer living in Brooklyn. At the age of 10, he was selected to attend the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow to study classical ballet. After graduating from the academy nine years later, Dmitry was awarded a full scholarship to Juilliard in New York City, where he received a BFA in modern dance and choreography. Dmitry remained in New York City to perform with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet for eight seasons and to teach ballet and choreograph for inner city youth at the Harlem School of the Arts.
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('05SOA) -
James Ponsoldt is a writer and director from Athens, Ga., who divides his time between New York and Los Angeles. His first feature film, Off the Black, premiered at Sundance earlier this year and was picked up for wide distribution by ThinkFilm. The film starred Nick Nolte as an alcoholic umpire who befriends a player initially angered by his erratic calls and persuades him to pose as his son for his 40th high school reunion. In addition, Colin has produced numerous shorts that have been featured in festivals in the United States and abroad.
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('96SOA) -
In her unflinching debut feature film, the acclaimed Boys Don’t Cry, Kimberly Peirce staked her place as a director of singular vision and craft, while shining a light on the shifting landscape of gender, identity and assimilation.
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('04SOA) -
David Pastor is a writer and director. He made his feature debut with Carriers, which he co-wrote and co-directed with his brother Àlex Pastor. The horror film starred Chris Pine, Piper Perabo, Lou Taylor Pucci, and Emily VanCamp as four friends facing difficult choices as they flee a deadly pandemic. Pastor’s most recent work has been writing episodes for the Spanish science-fiction series El barco, which chronicles the aftermath of a catastrophic accident in a particle accelerator.
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('06SOA) -
Ian Olds is a director of both narrative and documentary work. He directed Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, a feature-length documentary that follows the relationship between an Afghan interpreter and his client, American journalist Christian Parenti. The film won Best New Documentary Filmmaker at the Tribeca Film Festival, First Prize of the Jury at Documenta Madrid, and the Special Jury Prize at Pesaro Film Festival.
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Columbia University School of the Arts offers MFA degrees in Film, Theatre Arts, Visual Arts, and Writing, an MA degree in Film Studies, a joint JD/MFA degree in Theatre Management & Producing, and a PhD degree in Theatre History, Literature, and Theory.
Columbia University School of the Arts offers MFA degrees in Film, Theatre Arts, Visual Arts, and Writing, an MA degree in Film Studies, a joint JD/MFA degree in Theatre Management & Producing, and a PhD degree in Theatre History, Literature, and Theory.