Film

Matthew Nash is Professor and Chair of Digital Filmmaking in the College of Art + Design. He is an award-winning filmmaker, experimental artist, and publisher.

In 2013, he released the Holocaust documentary “16 Photographs At Ohrdruf,” which won awards in film festivals and contracted to several broadcast and streaming platforms, including the Pentagon Channel, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. The film has screened internationally, and has been released in German and French translations. In 2015, the film screened in Germany and Luxembourg to honor the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Ohrdruf Concentration Camp.

Nash has also created several science-fiction shorts, including “Dysopticon” (2015) and “Astronaut” (2017). He has also created work for various art departments, including “Law & Order: SVU,” “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Sleepless.” He was the Editor for the feature film “بی پایان؟” (“Endless?”) by director Maryam Zahirimehr, which won many awards and been included in over 30 film festivals.

In 2019–20 he co-directed the horror thriller “Walk Away,” which included many LA+D students, faculty & alumni on the production team. The film has won awards in film festivals and was released during the COVID-19 quarantine, licensed directly to streaming platforms including Amazon Prime and Roku Channel. The Official Film Soundtrack has been released to Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.

Nash is half of the art-team Harvey Loves Harvey with his partner Jason Egan. Harvey Loves Harvey are represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston. In 1994 they started the artist collective called The Number Foundation. In 2003, Nash founded the art magazine Big Red & Shiny, where he served as Publisher and President until 2012. In 2012 he started the non-profit 454 Productions to support independent film work with an educational mission. Nash & Egan also host a podcast titled “We Listen 2 Records” on iTunes and Stitcher.

Ingrid Stobbe is an award-winning Visual Media Artist and Educator. She creates a diverse range of artwork including both narrative and experimental pieces that embrace the artistic medium as a vital component of effective storytelling. Her work poses questions of self-identity, feminism, and perception while investigating the most effective manner to convey meaning in artistic dialogue; whether that finds expression in film, paint or writing is dependent on the nature of individual stories. Often these expressions exist at the intersection of genres, asking engagement from the viewer as questions arise concerning the relationship between presentation and observation. But always, the art maintains and celebrates the unique properties of included media, while commenting on form and its implications in storytelling.

Ingrid's films have screened and exhibited nationally and internationally, and recently featured in International Encounters Traverse, Boston Voyager Magazine, and Palaver Journal. Her writing can be found in a variety of publications, including Mantra Wellness Magazine, Psychology Tomorrow and The Glossary. Her film Orange can currently be seen in SoAnyway Magazine's 2nd Volume and on exhibit at the Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture, while select paintings were recently chosen for "The Art Edit," Condé Nast's curated advertorial campaign showcasing independent two-dimensional artists in House & Garden, UK. She is co-author of the upcoming book Being Creatively Limited with William Pace (Focal Press, 2021), and is currently in pre-production on her short film The Dog Star, and media installation Contextual Bodies.

Ingrid is on the board of Women in Film & Video New England, as well as the editorial board of the Journal of Film & Video, and previously served on the Marketing Committee for the Metropolitan New York Chapter of the US National Committee for UN Women. She has comprehensive experience designing curricula for the visual arts, and in 2020 her pedagogy was internationally recognized with the University Film and Video Association Award of Teaching Excellence. She is a frequent juror for numerous film festivals, and regularly speaks at various institutions about media production's evolving landscape, and its broader social impact.

Tim Geers has been filming underwater natural history shows and films for over 20 years in locations all over the world. Tim is the recipient of seven New England Emmys and a national CINE Golden Eagle for his cinematography and field producing. He also is a College of Art and Design alumnus, earning his MFA in Visual Arts with us in 2007.

Bob Gifford is an Adjunct Faculty teaching in the Animation and Digital Filmmaking departments. He has been teaching at the College of Art and Design since 2001. Bob has worked in commercial video production for 25 years and as a video production manager, trained staff in field and studio video production. He is also a professional musician/songwriter and recorded two albums for MCA records. He has taught Video Production 1 and 2, Audio Production and Design and Editing Intensive.

Ziad’s body of work as a director, producer and writer has earned over forty awards and honors. Presently Ziad is producing the film The Sharpest Edge of Nature. Ziad served as an executive producer on Forbidden Womanhood which is currently in its post-production stage. Most recently Ziad produced The Island Of Forgiveness starring Claudia Cardinale. Both films are slotted for release in 2021. Prior work includes producing The Flower of Aleppo starring Hend Sabry and executive producing Dreams I Never Had starring Malcolm McDowell. The Flower Of Aleppo was honored as Tunisia’s entry into both the 2017 Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards. The Flower was chosen to be the opening night event at the prestigious Carthage Film Festival. His critically acclaimed feature film Shadow Glories has been heralded as “Powerful and distinctive. A mature, accomplished work...strong, stylish and uncompromising” by Kevin Thomas, film critic for The Los Angeles Times. In July, 2019, Ziad had the release of Hail Mary (Sushi Tushi), his animated and live-action football comedy.

Currently in development is Ziad's feature film Willow based on Christine Handy's best selling book Walk Beside Me. Stylistically, Willow is a magnificent story where poetic realism marries the the harsh dark layers of life. A rose standing in the center of the violent storm, tossed in so many directions with no shelter. A clearly focused journey that sparks with fresh and honest look at the struggles that face our character in her darkest moments. An accomplished original, and brilliant structure that breaks through the common chains and expectations of a melodramatic story and elevates it with gracefulness. The poetic nature that embodies the style of writing will allow a dazzling display of rawness and courage. Lightness that disguises the truth and the darkness that reveals it. Silence that conquered the greatest noise, the audience will feel the power of this emotionally charged journey.

In Hollywood, Ziad created two extraordinary theaters: The Open Fist Theatre Company and The Egyptian Arena. As Artistic Director of the award-winning Open Fist Theatre, Ziad brought to the LA theatre community prestigious international playwrights such as Arrabel, Artue, Beckett, Brecht, Churchill, Gretzky, and Lorca. He directed and produced over sixty major stage productions, among them Roxy Ventola’s After The Bomb, Brecht’s Baal, Sam Shephard’s True West, Arrabel’s Car Cemetery, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant, Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carre, Nicholas Kazan’s Blood Moon, Poor Murderer, The Architect And Empress Of Assyria, Cinders, Low Level Panic, and Dusa, Fish, Stas, and Vi. Ziad has mentored and empowered numerous artists such as Burr Steers (Charlie St. Cloud, 17 Again, Igby Goes Down), Tony Spiridakis (The Last Word, Queens Logic), Dalene Young (Cross Creek, Pale Rider Pale Horse, Little Darlings), and Juan Carlos Valdivia (Southern District, Juno and the Pink Whale, American Visa). They found a haven for their creative powers when joining Ziad at The Open Fist Theatre.

Professor Ziad teaches advanced and graduate classes in filmmaking and photography at Lesley University. He earned an MFA in Directing from California State University, Fullerton, an MA in Writing and Criticism from California State University, Los Angeles, and a BA in Theatre from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Ziad is a member of the Producer's Guild of America serving on the diversity committee.

Jenkins is an interdisciplinary artist and educator who works in stop motion animation, drawing and social practice. Her work is inspired by labor, women’s work and post-industrial landscapes. She grew up in the Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania, where she attended Penn State Altoona for Visual Art Studies and Women’s Studies.

She went on to earn her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. She currently teaches animation and filmmaking at both Lesley University and Harvard University. In May 2019 she was an artist in residence at MASS MoCA, where she worked on her current experimental stop motion project.

Federico Muchnik has been making films for thirty years. He studied film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and worked as a producer for PBS. He has also produced content for Disneyland, ABC Television, and HBO. He played the lead role in "The Golden Boat", directed by Raul Ruiz. The film was shown at Sundance, New York, Toronto, and was distributed by Strand Releasing. He co-wrote and co-edited "Secret Courage", a documentary about the Jewish resistance movement during World War II.

He has made many fiction-based long form series for the educational markets and filmed numerous projects throughout North America, Europe and Latin America. He has taught filmmaking at Boston University, Emerson College, and in New York and Los Angeles. Most recently, he produced and directed the feature length "This Killing Business" distributed by Filmbox Arthouse in Europe and shown at numerous festivals in the US. He is also the author of The Strategic Producer: On the Art and Craft of Making Your First Feature.

Vartabedian is a Boston-based independent filmmaker and educator who has produced and directed several award-winning narrative and documentary films that have screened both locally and internationally.

She holds a degree in Acting from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and studied Filmmaking at Maine Media Workshops. She has been a media educator since 2004, having launched several accredited filmmaking programs throughout Boston and Los Angeles. She served on the board of Women in Film and Video New England, The Regional Youth Media Arts Education Consortium at the ICA, Fort Point Theatre Channel, and is the Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Tidal Theatre Company.

She is Creator and Producer of The Mosquito Story Slam, a popular storytelling series and podcast, and is currently in production with her film, Year Rounders. A recent short she produced, Like Pain, Like Cigaret, was recently screened at Cannes.