Women in the Directors Chair
Tisch School of the Arts, New York Universtiy

This course offers students the opportunity to focus on women directors in film and television - their careers, their work and their messages. Through an historical and critical overview of the impact on the film and television industry of the woman director, students will also gain valuable knowledge on how a woman can develop a career as a director and use that opportunity to work creatively and develop their own concepts and ideas. This course will include guest women directors and, when possible, on-site visits to locations and studios.

*I developed and taught this course between 1998 and 2002, beginning as a teaching and research assistant to Louise Tiranoff, and later on my own.

Young Jewish Filmmaker's Project

A co-production of the Coalition for Jewish Learning's Young Jewish Filmmakers' Project and docUWM, a division of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Fine Arts Film Department. Financed by a grant from the Helen Bader Foundation, this project allowed teens to be mentored by a graduate student (me!) in the production of a short film that explored how Jewish identity and the Holocaust experience obligated them to respond to the genocide in Darfur. Two Walks juxtaposes the Milwaukee Jewish community's Walk for Israel against a youth walk for Darfur organized by two of the seven teen filmmakers.

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Comics to Movies
Bedford Stuyvesant Collegiate Charter School

What film, TV, and comics all have in common is that they tell stories. We tell stories, too.  Beginning from the idea that we are all storytellers, Comic's to Movies explored the fundamentals of visual storytelling from the conception of an idea through its realization in finished comic books.  Focusing on artistic processes, we looked at examples, brainstormed, told stories, took risks, practiced drawing from life and imagination, and gave each other feedback.  Students worked collaboratively and on their own, some lead the class in daily warm-ups and others presented their works-in-progress for critique.