Alumni

Ksenia Adamovitch

Ksenia Adamovitch (MA, 2009) is a documentary producer, writer, and director based in Moscow. She is director of the annual Russian Documentary Film Festival in New York City.

Hye Seung Chung

Hye Seung Chung, is Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. She received her her M.A. in Cinema Studies at the College of Staten Island, C.U.N.Y. in 1999, and her Ph.D. in Film and Television from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004. Her areas of specialization include: classical and contemporary Hollywood cinema, race and multiculturalism in American popular culture, feminist and postcolonial film theories, Asian American media, East Asian/Korean cinema, and global Cold War cultures. Chung is the author of Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-Ethnic Performance (Temple University Press, 2006). In addition to her book, Professor Chung's scholarship on Korean cinema has been published in such journals and anthologies as Asian Cinema, Film and Philosophy, South Korean Golden Age Melodrama, New Korean Cinema, and Seoul Searching. More at her faculty page

Dan Colonna

Dan Colonna currently works for Rodale Inc. as a web developer on the redesign for MensHealth.com. He also runs and contribute articles to a political/technology discussion-based blog at http://www.nerdpundit.com.

Casey Cooper

I graduated from the College Of Staten Island, June 06 from the Department of Media Culture. I received my degree, BA of Arts, shortly there after. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience, not only because of my peers, but its the intricacy of my courses that maintained my focus. Among them were various Film Production classes, Film Theory, 3rd World Cinema, Italian Cinema, and my favorite, America Directors I & II. The aspect of Film I am interested in the most is writing which I am pursuing here in Los Angeles. Shortly after graduation I decided to aggressively pursue my career out here in Hollywood along with many other hopefuls. It's an amazing industry, tough but not impossible, to be a part of. Although I haven't sold anything in the short time I've been here I've just come off working as a Production Assistant in this past season of America's Next Top Model. I was able to meet so many amazing people in my field and it provided numerous connections and possibilities down the line. I was able to be a part of something, while not groundbreaking, brings me another step closer to my goal. These are the kinds of things that make you driven and proud, Don't ever give up!

Michele Cynowicz

Michele Cynowicz is currently working as a Front End Web Developer for Marvel Entertainment (marvel.com). She also consults for web development and print media projects for small businesses under the name FanBrush Media, LLC, providse design for the web and for print as well as web hosting services for a variety of projects including static websites and e-commerce. Her current portfolio is here: www.cynowicz.com

Martha Diaz

Current MA student Martha Diaz has had a paper accepted by a conference of graduate student research held annually by the Department of Cinema Studies at San Francisco State University in October 2011.

David Scott Diffrient

David Scott Diffrient is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Colorado State University, specializing in American film history, genre studies (with an emphasis on comedy, fantasy, horror, and science fiction), television studies, cult fandom and taste cultures, East Asian popular culture, and postmodernity. Besides serving on the editorial board of Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media, he has published articles in Cinema Journal, Film & History, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Post Script, and other journals, and recently completed his first book, a manuscript on the television series M*A*S*H (Wayne State University Press). He is the co-editor of a forthcoming volume on the "screwball" TV series Gilmore Girls (Syracuse University Press), and is currently collaborating on a book about transnational Korean cinema. More at his faculty page

Renée Lynette Ferrara

Renée Lynette Ferrara (BA, 2011) is the proud recipient of a Drama Desk Award, and has stage-managed off-Broadway shows including Platanos and Collard Greens and Fuhgeddaboutit!

Seth Friedman

Seth Friedman earned his M.A. in Cinema Studies from The College of Staten Island in 2004. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. His dissertation, "The Truth is Out There: Cultural Paranoia, New Media Technologies, and the Contemporary Hollywood Misdirection Film," expands on the research conducted in my Master's thesis. Essays derived from those projects have been accepted for publication in The Journal of Film and Video and the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. According to Seth, "the education, mentorship, and teaching experience that I received at CSI prepared me well for further graduate study and beyond."

Antonio Golàn

Antonio Golàn was raised on Staten Island, and did his undergraduate work at the College of Staten Island, majoring in Cinema Studies. Upon his graduation in January 2002, he moved to Galicia (Spain), where his family is originally from, and lived there for over two years. In 2004, he returned to the College of Staten Island to complete a master's degree in Cinema and Media Studies, eventually completing a thesis on the representations of the American Dream in Hollywood drug films. In 2008 he began my PhD at Indiana University (Dept. of Communication and Culture) and is currently working in the field of rhetoric as well as media studies. His research interests include, minority nationalisms in Spain, indigenous identity and democracy in Bolivia, grassroots media, and radical pedagogy.

Zeynep Kocer

Zeynep Kocer is is near completion of the PhD at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and has an article forthcoming in the European Journal of Cultural Studies. She graduated from the Media and Culture Department at CSI in 2005. Her MA thesis is on the representation of femininity in Turkish internal migration films of the 1960's until the 1990's. A chapter of that thesis will be published in ''Cinema and Politics'' from Cambridge University Press. She is currently working on her dissertation on the reconstruction and redefinition of masculinity through the heroes in the Turkish cinema of the 1970's until the 2000's from the perspective of morality, politics and the understandings of law and order. Her research interests are Turkish cinema and politics, gender studies, and the horror genre.

R. Amit Kumar

R. Amit Kumar is a media maker and scholar. He did his MA in Cinema and Media Studies from College of Staten Island, CUNY and is currently a doctoral candidate in Cinema and Media studies at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His research focus is cinematic performance and spatial reconfigurations in neo-liberal India. He has earlier published and presented in conferences on the theatrical soft-porn films in India commonly known as “Sleaze” films. He has also presented on Digital implications in Indian Cinema; Middle Cinema; and new audiences and exhibition spaces in India. He is currently editing his first documentary Babu in Bollywood and is also working on the pre-production of his first feature length film titled Blemished Light. He is founder of 69 Productions, a group of independent and freelance media makers (www.69mp.com).

Sarah Kuntoh

In 2000 Sarah Kuntoh won a Fulbright scholarship to complete her Masters at the College of Staten Island for two years. Her thesis was titled titled RACE REPRESENTATION IN CINEMA: THE WESTERN AND AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES. She returned to Ghana, where she has taught at the National Film and Television Instiute. Her current research seeks answers to two questions: Why the cinema-going culture has lost its value in Ghana?; and the Evolution of Ghanaian Cinema since Indepaendence and the way forward. The Institute's URL is www.nafti.edu.gh National Film and Television Institute, PMB,GPO, Accra Ghana, e-mail: skuntoh (at) hotmail (dot) com

Jayme LaBrocca

After interning for course credit at CBS Radio, Jayme LaBrocca moved up the ranks to become Assistant Production Director at 923 Now. She now produces Nick Cannon's Top 20 (Urban) and Top 30 (Mainstream) Countdowns, which are syndicated globally.

Joyce Lau

Joyce Lau co-produced two short films, Trek 183 and Waiting for Her, which screened at the Coney Island Film Festival, Words, Beat & Life Hip Hop Film Festival, Staten Island Film Festival, Long Island International Film Expo, HBO Presents The New York Latino International Film Festival, and LA Shorts Fest. She also teaches as an Adjunct Lecturer at Hunter College and completed a second master's degree, in Mental Health Counseling, at Queens College. She is currently in preproduction on a short film entitled Long Roads.

Djordjije Lekovic

George Lekovic (BA, 2004, Magna Cum Laude + Elliot Rubenstein Memorial Award for Academic excellence) has produced several feature films, including Here and There (2009) starring David Thornton, Cyndi Lauper and Jelena Mrdja. Djordjije Lekovic graduated from the College of Staten Island in 2004 with high honors.

Qimei Luo

Qimei Luo (BS, 2011) is the New York reporter for Sina Finance.

Mike Maslankowski

In 2009, Stephen Barnett (current) and Mike Maslankowski (BA, 2011) presented original work at the Third Annual Midwest Undergraduate Film Studies Conference at Notre Dame University.

David Maltz

Since graduating from CSI with a BS in Communications, I have moved on to Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts to study Print and Multimedia Journalism. Many of the Communications classes I took at CSI helped prepare me for the coursework I am doing now. COM 277 –Intro to Journalism and COM 450 – Senior Seminar, directly tie in to the work I am doing in my first semester of graduate school. The numerous design courses I took at CSI also help me now with our projects.

http://www.emerson.edu/journalism/graduate/index.cfm
http://pages.emerson.edu/Courses/fall06/Jr600a/David_Maltz/ADayintheLifeofaHomelessShelter.htm

Carlo Montagnino

Carlo Montagnino (BS, 2008) is a web technology consultant and co-owner of the award-winning web design firm NBTechnologies. He is also Co-founder and Executive Producer for his Dog and Pony Show Media Group (daps.tv). In his spare time he develops web applications that exploit the concepts of social networking sites. In Fall 2009 he will be in residency at the Banff New Media Institute to develop a project. You can find out the intimate details of his life on his twitter (twitter.com/augiemania) and his blog (augiemania.com).

Evan Moran

Evan Moran has worked for Subsidiary Design, spent 3 years at Morgan Stanley, as a web designer through R.R. Donelly. He is currently freelancing, and working on personal projects: freaksuncensored.com, a movie about the history of human freaks, and speekspace.com, a venue for spoken word. More at http://evanwmoran.com

Michael Sgalambro

During his last semester in Spring 2006, Michael Sgalambro worked as a production assistant on NBC's short-lived television program, Conviction. My main work was in the production office which is the heart of making a television program. Though the show was canceled he met some terrific people, and is now a Production Assistant for NBC's comedy, 30 Rock. He is working with the same group of people he met on his internship. www.halfemptyproductions.com

Norie Taniguchi

Norie Taniguchi received her B.A. in Cinema Studies, and in 2008 recieved her M.A. in Cinema and Media Studies. Her 2008 film Women Without Voices screened as part of the International Film School at the 2008 San Sebastian International Film Festival, in San Sebastian, Spain. Taniguchi in the PhD program at Waseda University, in Tokyo, where she will continue her research on benshi and "silent" cinema in Japan with Professor Hiroshi Komatsu, one of the world's foremost scholars on this topic.

Stephen M Volpe

Steven M. Volpe (BS, 2010) was appointed social media associate at the Alzheimer's Association following an internship completed for course credit. His role in developing the nonprofit's social media presence is profiled in The New York Times.

Steve Waldow

Film Matters Magazine (V. 1, no. 3, July 2010) published an article by Steve Waldow (BA, 2010) on women in the films of early cinema pioneer Georges Melies.

Stephanie Ward

Stephanie completed her B.A. in Cinema Studies in January of 2006. She has been working as a freelance media planner for Nicktoons Network. This freelance work grew out of her two internships she did: a programming/acquisitions internship for Nicktoons Network and a production internship for MTV2's High School Stories: Scandals, Pranks and Controversies.