Full-Time Film Faculty
Assistant Professor -
Born and raised in North Carolina, writer/director Ramin Bahrani’s films, Man Push Cart (2005), Chop Shop (2007), and Goodbye Solo (2008) have premiered and screened at Venice, Cannes, Sundance, Berlin and Toronto Film Festivals.
Assistant Professor -
Nico Baumbach holds a BA from Brown University and a PhD in Literature from Duke University. His research and teaching focus on critical theory, film theory, documentary and the intersection of aesthetic and political philosophy.
Assistant Professor -
Andy Bienen received a BA from New York University, an MA from the University of Virginia, and an MFA in Film from Columbia University School of the Arts. He cowrote Boys Don't Cry with Kimberly Peirce ('96SOA), director of the film. Bienen's feature screenplay, Wankers, won the Best Screenplay Award at the 1996 Polo/Ralph Lauren Columbia University Film Festival.
Assistant Professor -
Hilary Brougher's most recent film Innocence completed principal photography in the Summer 2012. The film was produced by Killer Films and adapted from Jane Mendelsohn's novel of the same title. It features Kelly Reilly, Linus Roache and Sophie Curtis; and was produced by Killer Films. Her 2007 feature Stephanie Daley starred Tilda Swinton and Amber Tamblyn. The film premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival where Hilary won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. The film was also awarded Best Director at the Milan International Film Festival.
Professor and Chair -
Ira Deutchman has been making, marketing and distributing films since 1975, having worked on over 150 films including some of the most successful independent films of all time. He was one of the founders of Cinecom and later created Fine Line Features—two companies that were created from scratch and in their respective times, helped define the independent film business.
Assistant Professor -
Katherine Dieckmann has made three feature films, beginning with the lyrical fable A Good Baby (2000), starring Henry Thomas and David Strathairn, which was workshopped at the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriting and Directing laboratories. Dieckmann then went on to direct Diggers (2007), a bittersweet comedy-drama starring Paul Rudd, Maura Tierney, Ron Eldard, Lauren Ambrose, Josh Hamilton, Sarah Paulson and Ken Marino. Her most recent feature film as writer-director is Motherhood (2009), a day-in-the-life comedy starring Uma Thurman, Anthony Edwards and Minnie Driver, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2009.
Assistant Professor -
Associate Professor Trey Ellis is an Emmy-nominated screenwriter, an American Book Award Winning novelist, and playwright. He has written screenplays for, among others, Columbia Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, HBO and Showtime. Along with the Emmy nomination, his HBO film, The Tuskegee Airmen, also went on to win a Peabody Award and several NAACP Image Awards. His screenplay for the Showtime film Good Fences, which starred Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Glover and was produced by Spike Lee, was shortlisted by PEN West for best teleplay and premiered at the Sundance Film festival.
Professor -
Jane Gaines is award-winning author of two books: Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice and the Law and Fire and Desire: Mixed Race Movies in the Silent Era. She received an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholarly Award for her forthcoming book on early cinema, Fictioning Histories: Women Film Pioneers and is working on The Documentary Destiny of Cinema.
Professor -
Bette Gordon premiered her new feature Handsome Harry at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival in the world narrative competition section. The film stars an ensemble cast including Campbell Scott, Steve Buscemi, Aidan Quinn, John Savage, and Karen Young. A pioneer in the American Independent Film world, Gordon is best known for her bold explorations of themes related to sexuality. Her early short films, most notably Empty Suitcases, won numerous awards and festival acclaim worldwide, including showings at the Berlin International Film Festival, New York's Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Biennial.
Professor -
Annette Insdorf is an internationally renowned educator, and author of Francois Truffaut, Indelible Shadows: Film and Holocaust, and Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski. Each of her books has become the definitive text on its subject, and the measure for other studies that follow.
Associate Professor -
Jamal Joseph has written and directed for Black Starz, HBO, Fox TV, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros., and A&E. His produced screenplays include Ali: An American Hero (Fox), New York Undercover (Fox), Knights of the South Bronx (A&E), and The Many Trials of Tammy B. (Nickelodeon). He wrote and directed Drive By: A Love Story, Da Zone, and the docudrama Hughes Dreams Harlem for Black Starz.
Professor -
From short experimental videos to feature-length narrative films, Tom Kalin’s award winning, critically acclaimed work has been screened throughout the world. His films and videos are in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum, the Centre Georges Pompidou and MoMA. His first feature, Swoon, was awarded the Caligari Prize at Berlin, the Fipresci Prize in Stockholm, Best Cinematography at Sundance and the Open Palm at the IFP Gotham Awards.
Associate Professor -
Rob King is a film historian with interests in American cinema, popular culture, and social history. Much of his work has been on comedy. His award-winning book, The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture (University of California Press, 2009), examined the role Keystone’s filmmakers played in developing new styles of slapstick comedy for moviegoers of the 1910s.
Associate Professor -
Eric Mendelsohn's feature film debut, Judy Berlin, starring The Sopranos' Edie Falco, as well as Madeline Kahn, Barbara Barrie and Julie Kavner, was an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard), won Best Director at Sundance, Best Independent Film at the Hamptons Film Festival and was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards.
His short film, Through An Open Window, starring Anne Meara and Cy
Associate Professor -
As a producer, she has worked in theatre, film, and television and is a pioneer in narrative web content. She is the co-founder of eguiders.com, a web site that makes daily recommendations of the best online videos. Morphos was a producer of The Bedford Diaries, a series on the WB network. She has produced over twenty-five off-Broadway productions, premiering new plays by David Rabe, David Mamet, Sam Shepard and Frank Pugliese and the long-running hits Blown Sideways Through Life and The Food Chain.
Professor -
Richard Peña has been at Columbia since 1989, becoming full time in 1996 and being named Professor of Professional Practice in 2003; from 2006-2009 was a Visiting Professor in Spanish at Princeton University. Mr. Peña has also served as the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival since 1988.
Professor of Professional Practice -
Nicholas Proferes was the director/cameraman and editor of Free at Last, a 90-minute documentary on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which was awarded best documentary at the Venice Film Festival in 1969; director of photography and editor of Wanda, a feature film directed by Barbara Loden, awarded best picture at the Venice Film Festival in 1971; and co-producer, director of photography, and editor of The Visitors, a feature film directed by Elia Kazan.
Assistant Professor -
Maureen Ryan is an independent producer concentrating on feature films—both documentary and narrative. She was co-producer of Man on Wire, the 2009 Academy award-winning feature documentary about Philippe Petit, the wire walker who walked between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. She is also co-producer of Project NIM which premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, won the Jury Prize for Best Word Cinema Documentary Director and was short listed for the Academy Award.
Professor -
James Schamus is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, producer, and film executive. His long collaboration as writer and producer for Ang Lee has resulted in eleven films, including Brokeback Mountain; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; The Ice Storm; The Wedding Banquet; The Hulk; Taking Woodstock and Lust, Caution.
Lecturer -
The films Romance & Cigarettes and Illuminata, both directed by John Turturro, and Luminous Motion and Handsome Harry, both directed by Bette Gordon are among June Stein’s most recent film appearances. She has also appeared in Sidney Lumet’s Q & A, and Tim Robbins' Bob Roberts among others. She recently shot the pilot for Mr. Robbins' (writer/director) Possible Side Effects for Showtime, and appeared in the pilot Like Family for NBC. Off-Broadway, she has originated many roles including the role of Roberta for John Patrick Shanley’s acclaimed Danny and the Deep Blue Sea opposite Mr. Turturro, Beth Henley’s The Miss Firecracker Contest and Am I Blue, Willliam Hoffman's As Is, Donald Margulies Found A Peanut, Milan Stitt’s The Runner Stumbles. She has also participated in Sundance's Theatre Lab.
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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.