Meet Our Faculty
Our faculty and staff are both master professors and working professionals connected to vast resources in the film and media arts production industry. Learn more about the faculty of the MFA Film Program at CCNY.
Andrea Weiss
Program Director
An internationally acclaimed nonfiction filmmaker and author, Andrea Weiss most recently co-directed The Five Demands, a feature documentary uncovering the little known story of a 1969 campus uprising by Black and Puerto Rican students that changed the face of higher education. The film won several film festival awards and was broadcast nationally on PBS in 2024. Weiss is also the director of Bones of Contention, a feature documentary delving into the historical memory movement in Spain and LGBT repression under the Franco dictatorship. Bones of Contention premiered in the Berlinale and won several film festival awards, including in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Valladolid, Spain. She is also co-director of Escape To Life, which premiered in the Rotterdam Film Festival followed by a European theatrical and television release. Other film credits include U.N. Fever, Recall Florida, I Live At Ground Zero, Seed Of Sarah, Paris Was A Woman, A Bit Of Scarlet, International Sweethearts Of Rhythm, Tiny & Ruby: Hell Divin’ Women, and Before Stonewall (for which she won an Emmy Award).
Weiss’ nonfiction books include Paris Was A Woman (Counterpoint Press, 2013), winner of a Lambda Literary Award, Vampires And Violets (Penguin, 1993), and In The Shadow Of The Magic Mountain (University of Chicago Press, 2008), winner of a Publishing Triangle Award. She has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Council on the Arts, as well as a U.S./Spain Fulbright Fellowship. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Rutgers University which honored her with a Distinguished Alumni Award.
Antonio Tibaldi
Program Director
Antonio Tibaldi has worked as writer/director in the film industries of Europe, Australia and North America since 1992, when he co-wrote (with Gill Dennis) and directed On My Own (Sundance 1993), nominated for 6 AFI awards (Australian Oscar Equivalent) and 1 Genie award (Canada’s Oscar equivalent). He has directed 5 other features, including Running Against (Sundance 1997, winner Cinequest and Prix Italia 1997, Prix Italia 1998 - Best TV film aired in Italy that year), and Little Boy Blue (winner Mystfest, Cattolica 1997).
His work has screened at festivals such as Sundance, Tribeca, IDFA, San Sebastian, Rotterdam, Festival dei Popoli; and was released by companies such as Miramax, Warner Bros., and Lion’s Gate. Since 2004 he has collaborated with UNTV (United Nations TV) shedding light on under-reported realities in South and Central America, Africa, and Asia. He recently completed an award winning short How She Didn't Die, a non-fiction film Gorgona, winner of “Best Italian Documentary” at Festival dei Popoli, as well as on a feature film We Are Living Things, released by Juno Films and available on Amazon.
His projects have received support from The Gotham (ex IFP - Independent Filmmaker Project), TFI (Tribeca Film Institute), FIND (Film Independent), Dokincubator, Eave, WEMW (When East Meets West), Biografilm.
He studied Philosophy and Art History at the University of Florence, Italy; as a Fulbright scholar he received an MFA in Film/Video at Calarts (California Institute of the Arts).
Annie J. Howell
Screenwriting/Directing
Annie J. Howell is a screenwriter and director. Her most recent credit is for the film Yellow Rose, starring Tony-nominee Eva Noblezada (Hadestown), which she wrote with director Diane Paragas. That film is the recipient of eight Grand Jury Prizes for Best Narrative Feature as well as two Audience Prizes, awarded at Urbanworld Film Festival and the Hawaii International Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter called the film heartfelt, provocative and “affecting on almost every level,” while Character Media called it “the immigration film of our times.” Yellow Rose is distributed theatrically by Sony Pictures Worldwide. Howell also wrote the screenplay for Little Boxes, starring Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets) and the late Nelsan Ellis (True Blood), which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and sold to Netflix. The film was re-licensed by Tribeca Films/Giant Pictures and is streaming on Apple TV, Amazon and Kanopy, amongst others. Howell has co-written and co-directed two features with Lisa Robinson: Small, Beautifully Moving Parts (starring Anna Margaret Hollyman, Mary Beth Peil Dawson’s Creek and André Holland Moonlight) and Claire in Motion (starring Betsy Brandt of Breaking Bad). Each film premiered at SXSW and played festivals, select theaters, and streamers. She is the recipient of the Sloan Feature Film Prize, an IFP Emerging Narrative Award for Best Feature, a Nantucket Screenwriters Colony residency, and a San Francisco Film Society/Rainin Foundation grant, amongst other awards. She has taught at institutions such as Duke University, The New School (where she is the founding director of the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Studies), Ohio University (tenured), NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Vermont College of Fine Arts and The City College of New York. Howell grew up in the Arizona desert and is an alum of Whitman College (B.A., English) and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (M.F.A, Film). She lives in New York with her husband and two sons.
Martina Radwan
Cinematography
Martina Radwan is an accomplished German-Syrian cinematographer. After moving to New York City in the mid 90’s, she DP’ed several fiction films before she developed a deep interest in documentaries. In 2024, she received an Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program for her DP work on Girls State. Her recent work includes Following Harry, One Person, One Vote?, Food and Country, The Fire that Took Her, Inventing Tomorrow, and The Final Year. Saving Grace, the 2012 Winner of both an Academy Award and an Emmy for Short Documentary, earned her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Cinematography. Her narrative work ranges from dramas like Rubaiyat Hussein’s acclaimed Under Construction, the first female directed feature in Bangladesh, to Gideon Raff's thriller The Killing Floor and horror film Train, as well as Maria Govern’s Rain, the first female directed Bahamian feature.
Continuing to push her own boundaries, Radwan directed two award winning shorts that played in national and international festivals, before she directed and produced Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, her first feature-length documentary as director. Martina is a member of the Academy and BAFTA Documentary Branch, as well as the Television Academy's Documentary Programming.
Tal Lazar
Cinematography
Tal Lazar is a Cinematographer, Producer and Educator. Following a decades-long career as a filmmaker, Tal's films are available on leading streaming platforms. Some of his notable films include Every Time I Die (thriller, as producer and cinematographer), The Unborn (horror, as producer and director), Close Range (action, as cinematographer) and The Other Story (drama, as producer). Tal is the founder and former CEO of NYC-based production studio MiLa Media.
As an educator, Tal has created and delivered workshops at prestigious institutions such as Columbia University School of the Arts and the American Film Institute Conservatory. His presentations are accessible online through major platforms such as Sundance Institute Collab, Berklee College of Music Online and MZed.com
Jerry W. Carlson
MCA Department Chair & Cinema Studies Director
Jerry Carlson is a historian of narrative forms with special expertise in narrative theory, the history of the novel, global independent film, and the cinemas of the Americas. From 2013 to 2022 he served as Chair of the Department of Media & Communication Arts at The City College CUNY. In addition, at the CUNY Graduate Center he is a member of the doctoral faculties of French, Comparative Literature, and Film & Media Cultures and a Senior Fellow at the Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies. He has lectured at Stanford, Columbia, Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (Cuba), the University of Paris, and the University of Sao Paulo, among others. His current research is focused on how film and prose fiction from the Global South portray the histories and legacies of slavery, imperialism and colonialism. Moreover, he is an active producer, director, and writer with multiple Emmy Awards. As a Senior Producer for City University Television (CUNY-TV), he created the series City Cinematheque about film history, Canapé about FrenchAmerican cultural relations, and Nueva York (in Spanish) about the Latino cultures of New York City. As an independent producer, his work includes the Showtime Networks production Dirt directed by Nancy Savoca and Looking for Palladin directed by Andrzej Krakowski. In 1998 he was inducted by France as a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques. He was educated at Williams College (B.A.) and the University of Chicago (A.M. & Ph.D.).
Boukary Sawadogo
Documentary
Dr. Boukary Sawadogo is Associate Professor of Film in the Department of Media and Communication Arts at the City College of New York – City University of New York (CUNY). Also, he is a faculty member in the French doctoral program and the Certificate Program in Film and Media Cultures at the CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Sawadogo has teaching and research interests in African cinema and Black American cinema. As an African cinema and Black diaspora scholar, he has authored five books, including Africans in Harlem: An Untold New York Story (2022), African Film Studies: An Introduction. Second edition (2022), West African Screen Media: Comedy, TV Series, and Transnationalization (2019), African Film Studies: An Introduction. First edition (2018), and Les cinémas francophones ouest africains, 1990-2005 (2013). He held the 2024-2025 Stuart Z. Katz Professorship in the Humanities and Arts at the City College of New York. In addition to his scholarship, Dr. Boukary Sawadogo is a media arts practitioner (a documentary film and a web-series on Africans in America) and the founding director of the Harlem African Animation Festival, the first festival in the United States that is exclusively devoted to African animated film and series.
Andrzej Krakowski
Screenwriting/Producing
Krakowski received his Ph.D. at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, where he studied film, television and theater directing. Before leaving Poland in 1968, he was also known as a young promising poet, writer and a cartoonist. After being sent to Hollywood on a six-month scholarship, he was stripped by the Polish authorities of his citizenship and declared persona-non-grata. He continued his education at the American Film Institute and over the last five decades, Krakowski wrote, directed and/or produced over 70 feature films, documentaries and TV movies including Looking For Palladin, Triumph of the Spirit, Eminent Domain, Managua, Tides of War, White Dragon, Portrait of a Hitman, Campfire Stories, Farewell to my Country and Politics of Cancer.
His TV series We Are New York won two Emmy Awards. Krakowski’s most recent productions Pollywood (for HBO Europe) (2022) and The Life And Deaths of Max Linder (2024) won awards at several international film festivals. Krakowski’s theater credits include Rejwach (in 2018 & 2019) at The National Jewish Theatre in Poland, King Davis on Broadway and Felix the Cat’s Musical Journey in Tokyo. He also has authored several books, among them: The World Through the Eye of a Screenwriter and Pollywood I and II. His bilingual book POLISH OSCARS won International Book Award in 2023. Dr. Krakowski is a visiting professor and founder of the International Postgraduate Program for Creative Producers at the National Film School in Poland, and a member of The Board of Foreign Advisors at the College of Media and International Culture at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China.
JT Takagi
Sound Recording
JT Takagi (Orinne JT Takagi) is an award winning independent film maker and sound recordist. Her films are primarily on Asian/Asian-American and immigrant issues and include Bittersweet Survival, Homes Apart: Korea; The Women Outside; and North Korea: Beyond the DMZ, which all aired nationally on PBS with two programs on POV. As a sound engineer, she has recorded for numerous public television and theatrical documentaries with Emmy and Cinema Audio Society nominations including the Power (Yance Ford, Netflix 2024), Black Panthers: Vanguard of the revolution (Firelight Media/Stanley Nelson), the Emmy winning Strong Island and 70 other films. She also directs Third World Newsreel, a non-profit alternative media center, teaches at the New School and serves on the boards of both community and national organizations working on peace and social justice. She is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Wendy Lidell
Marketing/Distribution
Wendy Lidell has been a distributor of independent and international cinema for over 30 years. Most recently she was the Sr. Vice President for Theatrical Film Acquisition and Distribution for acclaimed arthouse distributor Kino Lorber Inc.,where she oversaw the release of 20 films per year including many award-winning and critically acclaimed titles such as Academy Award nominee Four Daughters; Bacurau starring Sonia Braga and Udo Kier, Test Pattern by Shatara Michelle Ford, nominated for three Independent Spirit and three Gotham Film Awards, and Bruno Dumont’s France starring Lea Seydoux. When the COVID pandemic forced cinemas to close in 2020, Lidell launched Kino Marquee, the first of its kind virtual cinema platform that offered customers digital access to first-run film releases.
Prior to Kino Lorber, Lidell was President of International Film Circuit, which she founded in 1987 with support from the Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations. From 1999 to 2004, she headed the theatrical division of Fox Lorber, where she released major arthouse works including Edward Yang’s Yi Yi, François Ozon’s Under The Sand starring Charlotte Rampling, and Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark. Lidell has conducted numerous Academy Award campaigns, five of which resulted in Oscar nominations. She is a graduate of Cornell University and a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Deirdre Fishel
Documentaries and Dramas
Deirdre Fishel is an independent director whose work primarily focuses on the lives of women and has been broadcast in 35 countries worldwide. Her most recent documentary, Facing the Wind (2024), about two women whose lives are irrevocably changed by their husbands’ diagnosis of Lewy body dementia and their growing friendship (DOC NYC 2024). Deirdre’s earlier feature documentary, Women in Blue (2020) about women officers working to reform the Minneapolis Police Department in the years leading up to the murder of George Floyd, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS’ Independent Lens. Her documentary Care (2016) which looks at the lives of elder care workers and their clients and how America’s care system is failing both, premiered at Sheffield Doc Fest and was broadcast on America Reframed. Recent work has been funded by ITVS, the MacArthur and Ford Foundations, the Enterprise Fund, and the Tribeca Film Institute. Other projects include the groundbreaking documentary STILL DOING IT: The Intimate Lives of Women Over 65, which premiered at SXSW; Suicide on Campus, a web documentary produced in conjunction with The New York Times Magazine; and Risk, a dramatic feature that premiered in competition at Sundance.
Campbell Dalglish
Screenwriting
Campbell Dalglish, poet, playwright, filmmaker, film critic, screenwriter, teaches screenwriting, directing, “Films Without Scripts'' and “Ethnographic Filmmaking.” Recent award-winning productions include the PBS feature documentary, Savage Land (2021), screened internationally in over 20 countries. His award winning short films include Road Kill (2016) and Dance of the Quantum Cats (1994), and over a dozen short ethnographic films broadcast on The New Morning Show (2006-08). Working in the inner cities of New Haven and Hartford he has created for Connecticut Public TV films by and about marginal communities: A Hard Way Out, Shooting Gallery, Inner City Blues and The Reel Deal, and in the homeless shelters of Manhattan, Tunnel of Light and the musical Community Room. With composer Robert Elhai he wrote the book and lyrics for a Rock ’N Roll Musical, Skins of the Money Drum (1985) and for the opera Blue Mass (1986). As Writer-in-residence at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center (1978-1983) he taught creative writing in New England’s private and public schools, prisons and juvenile centers. He’s a Suffolk County Film Commissioner and Co-Founder of the Plaza Cinema and Media Arts Center in Patchogue NY with Isabella Rossellini, where he was President (2009-2021). A member of the Barrow Group Advanced Playwriting Group, he has an MFA (1986) at Yale School of Drama under a three year Lynn Essler Playwriting Fellowship; BFA (1971) University of Colorado and Colorado State University (1969-70).
Babak Rassi
Editing
Babak Rassi is a film editor with over twenty years of experience in feature films and documentaries as well as promotional videos and episodic TV. He has served as a technology integrator and post-production consultant for NYC filmmakers as well as companies like Tekserve, Avid Technology, and Apple. From 2002 to 2010, he oversaw post-production at Link-TV, a satellite broadcaster focused on world culture and music.
Rassi’s childhood home was a social hub for Iranian cineastes of the “Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults” (a.k.a. Kanoon). The profound simplicity and elegance of these short films, including that of Abbas Kiarostami, left a profound impression on him. As an educator Rassi aims to bridge that influence with established conventions of film editing and the emerging trends in post-production. He encourages student filmmakers to think critically, take risks and discover fresh approaches in crafting their stories.
His feature collaborations include Small Time, My Best Day, Looking for Palladin and documentaries Holy Land, Adam Fuss, A Landscape of Imagination, Varian and Putzi: A 20th Century Tale and Terre Vivante. Rassi has studied jazz composition, computer science, holds a BA in Communications from George Mason University and an MFA in Filmmaking from Florida State University.
David Briggs
Sound Design
David Briggs is a professional sound editor who in 2022 was nominated for an MPSE Golden Reel Award for his work on Severance (AppleTV), directed by Ben Stiller. Supervising Sound Editor credits include Palm Royale (AppleTV), Tokyo Vice (Max), Tales of the City (Netflix), Divorce (HBO), Hap and Leonard (Netflix); the documentaries Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage? (Disney), Dads, Do I Sound Gay?, Hunting in Wartime, Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger; the films Babygirl, A Kid Like Jake, 3 Backyards, My Best Day, Teeth. Other sound editing credits include Escape at Dannemora, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Moonrise Kingdom (Golden Reel nominee). He has sound designed numerous award-winning short films as well, including the 2014 Cannes Film Festival award-winning Oh Lucy! and the 2013 Canadian Genie Award winner Throat Song. He is a member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild and the Television Academy, and holds an MFA in Film from New York University.
Dave Davidson
Professor Emeritus
Dave Davidson is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and media educator whose work focuses on social issues, culture and the arts. His 2018 feature, A Gesture and a Word chronicled the final months of a brilliant musician/poet fighting brain cancer, winning Best Feature Film at The Richmond Int. FF.
In 2017, Davidson DP’d and co-directed (with Amber Edwards), There’s a Future in The Past, featuring Vince Giordano, the legendary bandleader and champion of Hot Jazz. The film had successful theatrical runs in Los Angeles and New York and was a “Critic’s Pick” in The New York Times. Davidson’s HANS RICHTER: Everything Turns-Everything Revolves (2013), a portrait of the Dadaist, filmmaker and radical educator, was a featured installation at museums in Los Angeles (LACMA), Berlin (Gropius-Bau) and Metz (Centre Pompidou).
Davidson has directed over twenty documentaries, garnering numerous awards including three Emmy’s. Most were broadcast on international television and nationally on PBS. They include, A Place Out of Time (2010), Into the Light (1996), The Dancing Man (1992) and Cissy Houston-Sweet Inspiration (1988). From 2010 to 2013, he was DP and Co-Producer on the 9-part PBS series, Michael Feinstein’s American Songbook, which received the ASCAP Deems Taylor / Virgil Thompson Award.
In 2019, Davidson directed CINEMA AND SANCTUARY – Hans Richter & America’s First Documentary Film School, which recounts the story of CCNY’s singular place in film history. It premiered at Lincoln Center.
As of 2020, Dave Davidson is professor emeritus at City College. He began teaching there in 1986 and became founding director of the MFA Program in 1999. Davidson has returned to full-time filmmaking with his documentary group, Hudson West Productions.
Chantal Akerman
(1950 – 2015)
Directing
Chantal Akerman was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and film professor at the City College of New York. A prolific director, she is best known for her films Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), News from Home (1976), and Je Tu Il Elle (1974). The first of these was ranked the greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound magazine's 2022 "Greatest Films of All Time" critics poll, making her the first woman to top the poll. (The latter two films also ranked in the same poll.)
At the age of 15, Akerman's viewing of Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965) inspired her to become a filmmaker. Akerman's first short film, Saute ma ville (1968), premiered at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. In 1971 she moved for a year to New York City, where she was exposed to the works of Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, and Michael Snow and began her long collaboration with cinematographer Babette Mangolte.
Akerman subsequently moved to Paris where she worked for many years in different genres and media, including documentary, comedy, and video installation. Her work has been exhibited in the world’s most prestigious film festivals and art museums. In 2011, she moved back to New York City to join the full-time faculty of the MFA Program in Film at the City College of New York as a Distinguished Lecturer, where she influenced, provoked and inspired film students until her death in 2015.
MFA in Film at The City College of New York
160 Convent Avenue (@ 138th Street)
Shepard Hall - Room 286
New York, NY 10031
Phone: 212-650-7235
Fax: 212-650-5734
Email: info@city-film.org
The City College of New York, CUNY
