Faculty Directory

Amina Cruz

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Amina Cruz was born and lives in Los Angeles. She hitchhiked around the country before deciding to move to New York City, where she earned her BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design. She also holds a MFA from UCLA. Cruz’s work is held in various private collections and is a part of the Getty’s permanent collection. Her interests are based in queer culture, film/analog photography, and exploring the space between transformation and identity. Her current work explores the outsider cultures of brown queer punks throughout the Americas.

Anna Maria Cianciulli Acting for Film Instructor

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Anna Maria’s work as an actor, director, writer, and producer has received nominations, awards, and recognition at many film festivals throughout the world, including Cannes.

Sanford Meisner personally assigned her the exclusive rights to bring out his seminal book, On Acting, in an Italian language edition (La recitazione – Dino Audino Editor 2007).

Anna recently played the co-star role of Juliana Chiari in the CBS series East New York, opposite Richard Kind, ended the filming of Maladaptive Daydreaming, and is currently filming My Mother is an Astronaut (2023).

She can be seen playing Gertrude on all major platforms in Hamlet/Horatio, a feature that has won 14 best film awards at festivals in the US and abroad. She also played a principal role in the Lifetime feature film Stealing Chanel.

Her solo-created short 33 Breaths was shot during the pandemic and was a finalist in the 2020 Single-Take Challenge.

Anna has produced, co-written, and coached the actors on the set of Life After Her, a multi-award-winning film shot in New York selected by the Short Corner of the Cannes Film Festival. Her film Stay has received a Special Mention from the Ouchy Film Awards Winter 2016.

As a theater director, actor, and producer she has worked with Kevin Bacon, the late Tony and Golden Globe-winner Brian Dennehy, the Academy Award winner Roberto Benigni, and the Golden Globe and Emmy-nominated Tony Danza.

Her work has been seen at: The Kitchen for a BAM event, Vanderbilt Hall of Grand Central Station, Joyce Soho, St. Peter’s Church, the American Museum of Natural History, and The Players Club.

Anna co-produced Tribeca in Rome – a cultural partnership between the Tribeca Film Festival and the Rome Film Festival, including the Steps and Stars Award received by Robert De Niro.

As an Acting Coach, she consulted with Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, Alessandra Mastronardi, Kick Kennedy, and Santigold, among others. She was the on-set Acting Coach of Yelo, a short film directed by Adrien Boublil (Cannes 2013).

Anna is also an Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University Film MFA Program and at the Feirstein School of Cinema MFA Program.

Jay Cipriani

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Jay Cipriani received his BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from WVU, studied film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and received his MFA in Film Production from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.

He began his career in story development and production working with writer/director Barry Levinson, producers Paula Weinstein, Len Amato, and Palak Patel, and later with writer Ted Griffin.

In 2008, he joined HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm assisting the show’s writing team, Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel.

2009’s A Golden Christmas, ION’s first original film, was Jay’s first produced screenplay and he has since written many more films including Hallmark’s Christmas Land and Carole’s Christmas for OWN.

Jay has story consulted on various projects throughout his career as well as being recognized in various screenwriting competitions, the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship, New Blood, Top 100 Emerging Screenwriters, Top 25 Spotlight Screenwriting Competition and The Tracking Board Top 25 Launch Pad to name a few. His scripts have also been top submissions on both the Black List website and Spec Scout. In 2015 he won Chicago’s Pride Films and Plays Screenwriting Competition where his screenplay SOMEBODY TO LOVE was performed live.

Joseph Gordon Cleary

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Joe Cleary is the owner of Ambitious Engine, a film production agency in NJ focused on the healthcare industry and is a Dean’s List graduate of the New York Film Academy Documentary Program. His film “Get it” was featured at the 2019 DOC NYC film festival.

Joe’s interests include shooting music videos, concerts and commercials with a focus on strong story telling, cinematography and sound design.

James H. Coburn IV CAS

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James H. Coburn IV has been teaching production sound at college level for fifteen years. He is a Production Sound Mixer of 25 independent feature films, including The Bronx Bull, Free Enterprise and All’s Faire In Love, and TV series including Roger Corman’s Black Scorpion and Guru To Go for Discovery Networks. He was one of the mixers on the 2015 documentary Kobe Bryant’s Muse. His most recent project was consulting about sound and mixing for the documentary feature, Be The Beauty, which showcases Poet Laureates around the country. Before turning to mixing he was a boom operator and has worked on numerous network TV series, documentary projects and features. A long-time member and former Board member of the Cinema Audio Society, he was instrumental in creating the CAS Technical Awards. James wrote the Foreword to the authorized biography of his Oscar-winning father, “Dervish Dust: The Life and Words of James Coburn” (Potomac Books, 2021) and is currently working on a new book about the art of Production Sound mixing.

Benjamin B. Cohen

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Benjamin Cohen is an award-winning writer, professor, and performer. In his writing, Benjamin likes to play with dark and challenging material from an honest, comedic perspective. Raised in Atlanta and based in Brooklyn, Benjamin worked on projects selected by the Austin Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and The High Museum of Art. He also appears in the Emmy-Nominated PBS short documentary, “What Makes a Great Book.” Benjamin has taught Writing and Film History at NYFA since 2012 and is an active member of the WGA-E. When he’s not writing, teaching, or performing comedy on the NYC stage, you can find Benjamin with his lovely wife and two dogs.

Eric Conner

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MFA, USC School of Cinema and Television
Eric has collaborated on screenplays with Robert Gardner (Writer, The Wedding Palace) and is developing a pilot with Hayden Black (Goodnight Burbank, Gen Zed). He is currently a regular contributor to ranker.com. As part of a team, he adapted the New York Times bestselling young-adult series Vampire Kisses and developed a feature film based on Knott’s Berry Farm’s Halloween Haunt. He currently hosts, produces and writes the podcast The Backlot for NYFA and was previously commissioned to write the original one-act play/short film The Also-Rans. He is the winner of the Sloan Award & Hamptons’ Writer’s Workshop for feature script Just Enough. He worked as a production manager on the documentary The Cutting Edge: The Story of Cinema Editing. His interview subjects include Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Sean Penn. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, he teaches TV Workshops, Introduction to Television, Rewriting, and Thesis Workshops.

Anastasia Coon Academic Advisor

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BFA in Theatre – Acting Emphasis, Chapman University. Conservatory Training Certificate, Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. MFA Acting, UT Austin. Adjunct Instructor at USC, Teaching Artist: Pasadena Playhouse, Guest Artist: Directors Lab West, Board Member: 2nd Sundays Screenplays LA.

Adam Coplan

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Adam Coplan’s resume boasts senior executive posts with three of the most prolific producers in the industry, Joel Silver, Scott Rudin and John Davis. Beginning as Story Editor at Silver, then running development at Rudin as Vice President before moving on to Davis, Adam worked on scores of critical and commercial hits such as The Matrix, Wonder Boys, The Truman Show, A Simple Plan, In & Out, Sleepy Hollow, I, Robot, Alien vs. Predator and Behind Enemy Lines among many others. Adam left to work as an independent producer, setting up Flash Gordon at Universal where he also produced The Express. Switching to the creative side, Adam wrote and directed the tragic feature film It’s Dark Here. Adam’s teaching began in UCLA’s Extension Program, where he honed his approach of mixing the academics with the practical. His first book, Being Professional, was published in 2016. Final Draft asked him to adapt his Road Map outlining system into a template for their software. After an adjunct position at Chapman and various guest lecturing spots, Adam settled in Miami and joined NYFA. He continues to write and has several projects in various stages of development.

Javier Costa

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Steadicam operator with over 10 years professional experience in the camera department. Active member of the Society of Camera Operators, The Steadicam Guild, and IATSE Local 600. Credits include commercials for clients such as McDonald’s and Target, music videos for artists such as Ice Cube and Megadeath, operating Technocrane on the documentary “Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron”, and television shows including “Survivor”.

Merrilyn Crouch

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Merrilyn Crouch received an MFA in Theater from The University of Southern California and has worked as an actor, writer and director in commericals, television, and film for over 20 years. Merrilyn has written, produced and directed promos for clients including CNN International, TNT, FOX, Discovery Channel, NUVO TV and others. She can be seen on the Food Network’s Good Eats in the recurring role as Alton Brown’s sister, Marsha.

Rick Curnutt

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MFA in Film Directing, Chapman University; BA in Cultural Anthropology, Boston University. Joined Trench Film Group (Beijing) in 1998, and continued on as a cinematographer, editor, and director of various award-winning independent documentaries, films, and music videos over the next seven years in China. His film, Run China won the honor of “Top 10 Documentaries of the Year” at the Chinese National Documentary Society Film Festival in Guangzhou, 2005; and has aired on over 20 Chinese television networks. Directed short films Potty Talk, Alarm, and Free Lunch, which all went on to screen and garner awards at select film festivals around the globe. Free Lunch was also picked up by Franco-German TV Network “Arte” after screening in competition at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France.

Morgan Dameron

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BA in Film & Television Production, USC
Morgan Dameron wrote, directed, and produced the feature film, Different Flowers. She previously worked at Bad Robot Productions on Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Trek Into Darkness. She has developed projects with Paul Feig’s Powderkeg Media, 3BlackDot, Olive Bridge Entertainment, and Very Big World. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, she teaches Art of the Pitch, The Business of Screenwriting, Script To Screen, Feature Workshops, Adaptation, Elements of Screenwriting, Story Generation. For the Producing Department she teaches Navigating The Industry online.

David D’Andrade

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Instructor for Foundation Drawing, Storyboard Drawing, Principles of Visual Aesthetics, Life Drawing, Media and Culture

Richard D’Angelo

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Richard D’angelo, an award-winning line producer and production manager in film and television. A lifelong film devotee, he received both his BFA in Film Production and Master of Arts in Theater and Film Studies from Long Island University. He produced and directed his graduate thesis screenplay, ‘First Person,’ into an award winning feature film. Richard’s two decades plus of experience in the entertainment industry have run the gamut from feature films to live event productions as well many industrial and commercial projects working as a producer, director, and editor. Recently Richard produced ‘The Cathedral,’ which had its world premiere at the 78th Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at Sundance, for director Ricky D’Ambrose who won the John Cassavetes Award for the film.

Darren Dean

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Darren Dean is an Award-winning American Producer, Writer and Director. Working in the realm of micro-budget and social justice films, he has helmed works by renowned directors Sean Baker, Rashaad Ernesto Green, Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra. His films have won awards at Sundance, have been nominated for Oscars and have won Clio Awards. He is currently hard at work at the new features THE END STAGE OF STARS (dir Rachel Mason’s follow-up to CIRCUS OF BOOKS); JACK-BE-NIMBLE (dir Alex Thompson’s follow-up to SAINT FRANCES); MO (dir Chris Brown’s follow-up to THE OTHER KIDS); as well as the debut feature AMERICAN 11 (dir Shayain Lakhani). Dean will also begin prepping his feature directing debuts in 2021, THE APOLOGY and the Spanish-language NO SUGAR TONIGHT.