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.

Michelle Clemons – Residence Hall Director

My name is Michelle (she/her/hers). I am a Psychology Professor and artist living in Southern Indiana. Last year, I was able to combine my passions for psychology and creativity by serving as the invited artist for a collaborative painting made during a National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) walk. I have also published both academic and creative works and have sold artistic work in multiple gallery shows.

I will not be teaching you anything about film; however, I have been on the faculty, staff, and student side of life at various institutions so I am an expert on college life. I am here to guide you through a positive living experience via community building, programming, and enforcing boundaries to build a safe space for you emotionally, mentally, and physically. I look forward to meeting you soon.

Danata Paulino – Associate Director

Danata (she/her) is a writer, performer, creative educator, and recent graduate from Emerson College, where she received her MFA in Screenwriting. Having always had a passion for writing and storytelling, her creative inspirations are often drawn from her travels, adventures, and the people she meets along the way! With a background spanning film, theatre, and live entertainment, Danata has worked with several entertainment companies worldwide, including Walt Disney World, appearing in filmed productions, commercials, and multiple Emmy® Award-winning television specials. She has also performed at multiple regional theatres and taught fine arts courses to students at a literary camp on the East Coast for several summers. Danata is very excited to now be working with the next generation of storytellers and filmmakers!

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.

Nick Karpinski – Production Faculty

Nick is a writer, director, and media artist. His creative interests are represented through experimental filmmaking and media arts practice. His research interests surround cinema, media ecology, and expanded media environments.

Throughout Nick’s films, he often utilizes hybridity — mixing media, along with fictional and nonfictional narrative devices. His methods put a microscope to human behavior and provide perspectives for how to see the world, while allowing the audience to intimately engage with those perspectives.

In addition to hybrid filmmaking, Nick also engages more directly with experimental filmmaking techniques to shed light on our lived-in media environments. He often uses the blend between ‘nature’ and culture to do so. In today’s world, we cannot separate ‘nature’ from culture, and the ways in which mass media, as cultural phenomena, have informed ‘nature,’ particularly with nostalgic images of the West. Nick explores and plays with those ideas in his experimental filmmaking.

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 screenwriter and director from a small village in rural Spain, an environment that continues to shape her filmmaking. Her work is emotionally driven, visually bold, and awkwardly funny, focusing on female desire and shame within repressive social landscapes. She is particularly drawn to stories centered on bodies in tension, intimate power dynamics, and humor that punches you in the gut. Her latest short film, Loquita Por Ti, premiered at Palm Springs International ShortFest, where it received a Special Mention for Best International Film, and went on to screen at festivals including Slamdance, Short Shorts, SEMINCI, and Clermont-Ferrand, among many others, earning multiple national and international awards. She was also a 2025 National Board of Review Student Grant Winner, and the film was just selected for the 2026 CAA Moebius Showcase. Alongside her directing work, Greta has collaborated closely with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ramin Bahrani as an associate producer on his upcoming features, Vegas Love Story and Last Meals. She holds an M.F.A. in Directing from Columbia University, where she also teaches, and is currently based in New York City.

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.)

Jimmy Schaus – Production Faculty

Jimmy Schaus is an artist, filmmaker, and programmer whose work spans experimental and narrative cinema, video art, sound, and music. He holds an MFA from University of Illinios Chicago and an MA from Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, University of the Basque Country. His work has screened at venues worldwide, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Fracto Experimental Film Encounter, WNDX Festival of the Moving Image, Florida Film Festival, Celluloid Now, De Pont Museum, and Intuit Art Museum. He has held residencies at ACRE and Syros International Film Festival and has taught at University of Central Florida, Loyola University, and University of Illinois Chicago.

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 – Screenwriting Faculty

A former Cherub and Faculty Associate, Ari Shapiro is an emerging filmmaker who has worked with HBO Max, TNT, and stars like Nastya from YouTube’s top children’s show “Like Nastya.” His award-winning short films have screened at festivals across the world, and his screenwriting has been awarded in competitions such as the Palm Springs International Screenplay Competition and the Humanitas College Comedy Awards. An actor for years Off-Broadway and in commercials and short films, Ari trained at Northwestern University in theatre before his transition to film. He recently graduated from Columbia University’s MFA Film Program, where he received Faculty Honors in screenwriting.

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.