NYFA
Faculty Directory

Faculty Directory

Tim Fannon Acting for Film Instructor

MFA in Acting, Brooklyn College; BS in Theater, Skidmore College; trained at the Royal National Theatre and the British Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Extensive stage experience and commercials; film and television roles include “Kidnap”, “Bar Flies”, “After I’m Dead”, and “Review with Forrest MacNeil”. Founding member/artistic director of Fovea Floods Theater, and company member of Moving Arts.

Mary Beth Fielder

Mary Beth Fielder is a filmmaker and teacher with over twenty five years experience in film and television.

Fielder has written screenplays for Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros and directed the television drama, thirtysomething. She wrote and produced award-winning feature films Wild About Harry, named Best of Fest at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in 2009 and Togetherness Supreme, winner of Best International Feature Film at the 2011 Santa Barbara International Film Festival and multiple African Movie Academy Awards. Fielder has taught film directing, screenwriting and acting at USC, Loyola Marymount University, Tel Aviv University, New York Film Academy and the Dodge College of Film and Media at Chapman University.

David Fratto

Executive Producer, BBC Worldwide; Sr. Director of Development, Scholastic Inc.; Director of Development, Vivendi Universal Games, Executive Producer, Knowledge Adventure; Education: Harvard University, BA.

Colette Freedman

MAT in Drama, Colgate University
Screenwriter, playwright, novelist, and actress. Colette has written the Lifetime film Sister Cities (Jacki Weaver, Alfred Molina, Stana Katic) and twelve other made-for-television films with her writing partner Brooke Purdy. Her feature films include Meli (starring Wendie Malick), And Then There Was Eve (2017 LA Muse Jury Prize Winner at LA Film Festival) and Miles Underwater. Colette is an internationally-produced playwright with over 35 produced plays, voted “One of 50 to Watch” by The Dramatists Guild. Plays include Serial Killer Barbie, The Affair, and Blind Spots (Encore Award 2018 Hollywood Fringe fest) and the upcoming Mozart2 the Musical and Amelia the Musical. She has written ten published novels, including the thriller The Thirteen Hallows (Tor Publishing) with #1 New York Times author Michael Scott; the YA book Anomalies with Sadie Turner (Select Books); and the legendary Steve Dorff memoir I Wrote That One Too (Backbeat Books). Freedman has co-produced several independent films, including Quality Problems (Freestyle Media, 2017 Best Feature, Women Texas Film Fest), Dancer in Danger (Lifetime) and Dangerous Cheaters (Lifetime). As an actress, she has worked on many television shows, including That 70s Show, The Young and the Restless, and JAG, as well as several independent films. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, she teaches Feature Workshops, Storytelling With Purpose, Script To Screen, Playwriting, and Scene Study.

Richard Friedman

Richard Friedman is a director, writer, and producer of motion pictures, television movies, episodic TV, network specials, and music videos. He has over 30 years experience in directing and producing ﬁlm and TV, including 14 Independent Feature Films, Television movies, Episodic Television Series, Reality TV, and Music Videos.

Nedra Gallegos

Nedra is an Instructor at the New York Film Academy-Los Angeles, where she teaches History of Acting, History of Theatre, History of Women in Film, TV and Theatre and Psychology of Production. Her background as an actor, director and teaching artist in New York City and Los Angeles uniquely qualifies her to work with students from all walks of life and backgrounds.

Matt Galuppo

Matt has been working in entertainment for over 10 years beginning his career as an intern on Inception. From there he worked on a dozen or so films as a previs artist, including The Amazing Spider-Man II, Warcraft, Poltergeist, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After that Matt began his directing career, making commercials for Fortune 500 companies including Toyota, Fiat, Netflix, and Nintendo. Spots, he produced, have garnered hundreds of millions of views and earned American Advertising Award, Muse Creative Award, among others. As a copywriter he has worked on Superbowl spots for brands like Verizon, Microsoft, and the NFL. Matt recently began his TV career selling animated pilots to COMEDY CENTRAL and SYFY.

More than all of this, Matt is most proud of the accomplishments of his students. In Matt’s 7 years of teaching animation his students have gone onto work on academy award winning teams, make effects for tent pole franchises, like Justice League and Star Wars, and even push the industry the forward helping create the industry standard software used by artists around the globe.

Éva Gardos

Éva is an award-winning film director and editor born in Hungary. Éva’s screenwriting and feature film directorial debut, An American Rhapsody, starred a young Scarlett Johansson. The film is based on the true life events of Éva’s family escaping from Hungary in the 1950s and being forced to leave their infant child (Éva) behind.

Dr. Masha Ghanbarpoor

As an educator, whose expertise lies at the intersection of language pedagogy, academic writing, instructional design, and educational technology, Mahsa has extensive teaching experience at both undergraduate and graduate levels. She completed her doctoral studies and received her PhD in Applied Linguistics with a focus on TEFL from the University of Tehran. Driven by a passion for advancing education through technology, she is currently engaged in the pursuit of her second doctorate degree, an EdD (Doctor of Education), in Education Technology at the University of Florida. Through this program, her aim is to leverage emerging technologies to enhance learning outcomes and promote inclusive, engaging, and interactive learning environments. In addition to her experience in teaching and mentoring students at various academic levels, Mahsa has actively contributed to the scholarly community through her research publications. She has published several scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals, contributed to academic books, and presented at international conferences within the realm of higher education, both domestically and abroad. Her main research interests include formative evaluation, computerized dynamic assessment, teacher education, and learner characteristics in second language learning.

Cathy Giannone Russo Acting for Film Instructor

BFA from Strasberg Institute at NYU. Lifetime member of Actors Studio. Has taught at Artist Theatre Group and Third Street Theatre. Recipient of two Drama Circle Awards and four DramaLogue Awards. Cathy Giannone is known for her work on The Bogus Witch Project, CB4 and The Little Rascals Save the Day.

Maria Gobetti Acting for Film Instructor

MA and BA in Theatre, UCLA. Artistic Co-Director at The Victory Theatre Center, with over 80 directing credits. Maria directed the critic’s choice world premieres of Jon Klein’s Suggestibility and Wishing Well. She also directed and produced the critic’s choice production of David Mamet’s Oleanna; the world premieres of American Iliad by Donald Freed. Maria was the 1992 recipient of Women in Theatre’s Outstanding Achievement In Theatre Award.

Lynda Goodfriend Creative Director of Acting for Film

Creative Director

Lynda received her BFA from Southern Methodist University. She has also studied with the legends, Lee Strasberg and Sandy Meisner. Lynda is a veteran of both Broadway and Off-Broadway productions appearing in shows such as Good News, West Side Story, She Loves Me, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Boyfriend. She was a series regular on the iconic hit television show “Happy Days,” and on the series “Who’s Watching the Kids,”and “Blanksy’s Beauties.” She guest starred on shows such as Love Boat, Fantasy Island and Vegas. She has also appeared in feature films such as “Pretty Woman,” “Taxi Driver,” “The Front,” “Beaches,” and “Nothing in Common.” Lynda was owner and principle instructor of the Actors Workout School for 15 years with locations in both Los Angeles and Orange County. Her theatre, the Actors Workout Theatre in NoHo, won numerous awards for its theatrical productions. She has also directed for television and film including a Disney pilot and the television movie Four Stars. Lynda opened her management company in 1983 and developed many actors’ careers until she became Chair of the Acting Department for NYFA in Los Angeles in 2011.

Lee Gordon

MFA in Screenwriting, AFI. With over a decade of industry experience, companies such as Disney and Warner Brothers have trusted Lee Gordon for his writing expertise. Having worked as a screenwriter and story consultant, Lee’s talents have taken him into adventurous corners of Hollywood. He was field producer for the scrappy indie documentary, Undefeated, which won the 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; writer for the Jean Claude Carriere Lifetime Achievement Award production for the Oscars narrated by Jeremy Irons; and has helped write several award-winning trailers.

Brandii Grace

Development positions at Microsoft Game Studios, Monolith Productions (Warner Brothers), Renaissance Games, Amaze Entertainment (working on Call of Duty: Roads to Victory, and Shrek the Third), and Hidden Path Entertainment. Teaching experience at Digipen Institute of Technology. Community leader at International Game Developers Associations. Education: Western Washington University, Computer Science

Miraj Grbic Acting for Film Instructor

Miraj Grbic is a Film, TV & Theater actor with more than 60 films and TV Shows including Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, The Hunting Party, Fast & Furious, Babylon, American Horror Story, SWAT, Santa Clarita Diet etc… He studied Acting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo and got his MA in Acting. He started working on Films and on the main stage of the National Theater Sarajevo in the late 90s. He worked on Films and TV shows in US, Bosnian, Croatian, Turkish, German, Australian, Irish and Italian productions while starring on TV Shows and in Theater for more than two decades in plays from Shakespeare, Chekhov, Moliere, Camus and many others. Miraj is currently filming a studio feature film and is teaching Acting for Film and Business of Acting at the New York Film Academy Los Angeles.

Andrew Gross

Manhattan School of Music; USC. Andrew has composed original scores and licensed his music to hundreds of features and episodes of TV. Scoring credits include: Bio-Dome (MGM), The King of Queens (CBS/Sony), and Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (New Line). His music has been licensed across all media, including: American Idol (ABC), So You Think You Can Dance (Fox), Nacho Libre (Paramount) and Ratatouille (theatrical trailer, Disney). Recent credits include scoring and music supervision on the Emmy nominated, Why We Fight (Verizon GO90) and the upcoming comedy series, The Dress Up Gang (TBS). Andrew has received 4 BMI TV Music Awards.

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