Philip Alvy – Division Director

Philip (he/him) is an award-winning filmmaker and arts educator. After graduating from Columbia College Chicago, he moved to Los Angeles and worked in the film industry before pivoting to education. In 2017, Philip lived in Kenya and developed a curriculum for an organization providing opportunities for youth to tell their stories through filmmaking. He completed his MFA focused on media education at Emerson College in 2020. Soon after, Philip founded Arts Integrated, a nonprofit aiming to create tools to inspire art-based learning for educators. Philip has served on the industry advisory board for the National Film Festival for Talented Youth and, in 2023, completed the Teacher Institute fellowship at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Carmen Hines Gardner – Residence Hall Director

Carmen Gardner is a Passion Strategist who specializes in helping individuals and organizations align their work with what drives them. She is an educator and creative leader with deep roots in Northwestern University’s academic and residential life community. She brings a dynamic blend of experience to her role as Residence Hall Director for NHSI’s Film Division, having supported pre-college learners through Northwestern’s College Prep Program and serving as a Teaching Assistant for courses in communication and organizational theory at Northwestern’s School of Professional Studies. Carmen is also the founder of Momentum Management Group, where she helps creatives and organizations lead with clarity, resilience, and purpose. Her clients include Grammy-winning artists, city agencies, and mission-driven startups. She currently serves as Co-Director of Northwestern’s Alumni Admissions Council and is the Executive Director of the award-winning short film Long Ride Home. Carmen holds a master’s degree from Harvard University, where she served as Student Association President, and a bachelor’s from Northwestern University. She is also the founder of Bark Manor, a boutique breeding and boarding company specializing in Goldendoodles and Lhasa Poos. She resides on the South Side of Chicago with her husband—an actor, professor, and President of SAG-AFTRA (Midwest)—their three dogs Chai, Copper, and Cora, and a pack of pups that keep life lively!

Monica Thiele – Associate Director

Monica is a high school teacher with experience in teaching English, graphic design, and visual media. She is passionate about empowering students to take creative risks in their work and to see their art and self-expression as a tool for liberation. Monica serves on the teacher advisory council for Arts Integrated, an arts education non-profit, and is a teaching fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Robin Woitesek – Assistant Residence Hall Director

Robin Woitesek, as a lifelong lover of film, has a passion for not only analyzing film, but inspiring others to both create and appreciate the art in the visual medium. This has led Robin to pursue her lifelong passion academically in which she conducted a year-long senior capstone project entitled, “Evil, Skanky, and Kinda Gay”: Queer Theory, Feminist Television Criticism, & “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” where she analyzed the cult television show through applying feminist television criticism and queer theory. Most recently, she has also been exploring the non-profit sector of this passion through working at Chicago Filmmakers as their Program Coordinator, where she was in charge of organizing upcoming film festivals, education courses, running screenings, and handling film projection. Robin began working with NHSI as a Residential and Faculty Assistant in 2023 and is excited to be coming back again this summer as the Assistant Residence Hall Director with the Film and Video Division.

Seunghee Chang – Production Manager

Seunghee Chang is a filmmaker who works between the US and South Korea, making films that experiment with and challenge the constructs of narrative fiction and documentary. His recent documentary, “The Beauty of Other Things,” which examines the Han River in South Korea as a site of grief and mourning, premiered in South Korea at the 77th Korean Psychological Association Annual Symposium, inaugurating a series of special symposiums focused on overcoming South Korea’s suicide crisis. While his films have screened and been awarded at many international film festivals, Seunghee is also the 2019 recipient of the Kwanjeong Scholarship. He holds an MFA from Northwestern University’s Documentary Media program.

Francisco Bongarzone – Production Faculty

Francisco Bongarzone is an award-winning Argentine-Italian-American filmmaker born in Los Angeles and raised in Chicago and Milan, Italy. His short, Una Casa En Diciembre (A Home in December), premiered at the REDCAT CalArts School of Film/Video Showcase 2021 and won the Best Actress Award at the Hong Kong International Short Film Festival 2021. Bongarzone was invited to second round submissions for the Sundance 2023 Development Track for his feature script, Twilight Dove. Additionally, his script made the quarter-finals for the 2022 BlueCat Screenplay Competition. Bongarzone was a DASAC video counselor at Deerfield Academy last summer and has been a guest bilingual teacher at Acero Santiago and Kokua Education since 2023. Bongarzone graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Minor in Art from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and received a Master of Fine Arts in Film Directing from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

Josh Coverdale – Production Faculty

Hi! My name is Joshua Coverdale, and I was raised in Yonkers, New York, where I developed a deep love for storytelling through the rich oral histories shared by my family. I was especially close to my grandfather, who often spoke about his experiences during the Civil Rights Movement and his travels around the world. As a child, I began recording these stories, which sparked both a fascination with technology and a lasting commitment to preserving meaningful narratives.

I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film, Animation, and Video from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Media from Northwestern University.

I believe that documentary filmmaking has the power to illuminate important and often overlooked stories, encouraging empathy and understanding. In my work, I strive to move beyond stereotypes and avoid exploitative depictions, with the goal of honoring the lives and communities I represent. I hope my films inspire reflection, resilience, and a sense that brighter days are always possible.

Juli del Prete – Directing Faculty

Juli Del Prete is a writer, filmmaker, and photographer. She is the co-creator, -writer, and -star of The Right Swipe, an intersectional feminist romantic comedy web series (OTV | Open Television). Most recently, she co-produced the short films Whole + Six Feet Apart by Isaac Gómez and Monty Cole and wrapped post-production for her directorial debut short film, Caroline. She was the assistant director for the world premiere of Tracy Letts’s Linda Vista (Broadway, Steppenwolf, Mark Taper Forum). Juli’s writing has been recognized by the Luminarts Cultural Foundation, Austin Film Festival, and O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. In her free time, you can find her sipping a giant Dunkin’ iced coffee while walking her lab/pit mix, Buffy.

Greta Díaz Moreau – Directing Faculty

Greta Díaz Moreau is a Spanish screenwriter/director and visual artist based in New York, known for her film and scenographic portrait work. As a director, she shows an evident passion for expressionist narratives, female perceptions of shame and desire in castrating environments, and exhilarating humor that punches you in the gut. During the pandemic in 2020, Greta started exploring the world of scenographic portraiture, leading the narrative for the exhibition “La Muda,” a project that spanned two years and was finally presented on February 27, 2021, at the Lo Pati Art Center. She is currently finishing her Directing MFA at Columbia University in New York, where she received the Sarah Jones Grant Award for her next project, ‘Loquita por ti,’ which will be filmed next fall in her hometown, Simancas, Spain.

Fiona Obertinca – Screenwriting Faculty

Fiona Obertinca is a Swedish/Albanian screenwriter and director with fourteen independent narrative and documentary short films under her belt, some of which have premiered at film festivals in Sweden, UK and U.S. Her very first short film Shpëtimi, which depicts her family’s refuge from the war in Kosovo won the Bronze prize at the popular Pixel Short Film Festival in 2012. Prior to graduating from the prestigious American Film Institute Conservatory as a Directing Fellow, Fiona worked in development in Hollywood on shows such as MAX’s Made For Love and BBC’s Ridley Road. Growing up as a refugee in Sweden as the daughter of a single mother of four, she saw first-hand how incredibly unjust the world can be to society’s most marginalized people. She hopes to tell stories for and about complicated, resilient women who must overcome the odds to find empowerment and self-actualization (laughs and tears guaranteed.)

Tristen Ortiz – Production Faculty

Tristen Ortiz is a filmmaker and writer from Chicago, currently based in New York. He is pursuing his MFA in Film and Television at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. His work spans fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid forms, often blending genre and visual experimentation with personal storytelling. Tristen has created multiple short films and worked across all aspects of production, including directing, editing, cinematography, color grading, sound design, and mixing. He also serves as a Teaching Assistant for graduate-level film courses at NYU. His past work has been featured on NPR through WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR affiliate, and includes interdisciplinary projects centered on community, media, and storytelling.

Aurora Real de Asua – Acting on Camera Faculty

Aurora is an actor, playwright, and filmmaker from the Bay Area and the Basque Country. She has performed in shows at The Goodman Theatre, Court Theatre, Northlight Theatre, American Players Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Rivendell Theatre, Victory Gardens, Remy Bumppo, among others. In 2019, she was named one of Chicago Tribune’s 10 Hot Young Faces in Chicago Theatre. Film credits include Knives and Skin and Working Man. As a playwright she has worked with Second Stage Theatre, the Manhattan Theatre Club, The Old Globe, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her play Wipeout received a rolling world premiere at five different theatres through the National New Play Network, where it was given the David Goldman Fund for New American Plays Award. Her short film Heartsong debuted on Short of the Week and screened at various festivals across the country. She received a BA in theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in film from Columbia University.

Ari Shapiro – Acting on Camera Faculty

Katla Solnes – Screenwriting Faculty

Katla Sólnes is a wry and aesthetically driven writer-director represented by True North Talent with a diversified background in filmmaking. Preceding her master’s, she spent five years as a full-time editor and scriptwriter at a competitive ad agency in Iceland. She just finished her last semester at Columbia’s illustrious MFA film program and recently won Columbia’s Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Screenwriting Competition with her feature, which is currently in development with funding from the Icelandic Film Fund, titled ‘Eruption’. She’s currently in post-production of her thesis short ‘Embla’ a feminist fable fully supported by The Indian Paintbrush Fund. Her recent shorts, ‘Make a Wish, Benóný!’ starring A24’s Lamb’s Björn Hlynur won awards at RIFF and DC Fest and is currently on its festival circuit and the even more recent film, a textured environmental film about the rising sea levels, ‘Whim Rules the Child, Weather the Field’ starring Edda Björgvins and Jörundur Ragnarsson (fully funded by The Icelandic Film Fund) has just entered its festival circuit and is set to premiere at the Academy-qualifying SSFF festival in Tokyo.