Diego Fandos (screenwriting) is a filmmaker from Spain. Originally a journalist (University of Navarra), he has written and directed TV commercials, documentaries and the feature Cosmos, presented in the San Sebastian Film Festival and released in 2008. His last two shorts - Under Pressure (2014) and Aurora (2017) - have been selected and awarded in more than 60 festivals around the world. Diego has published two collections of short stories -"Lemon Loves" (2015) and “Prague on February” (2020)- and the handbook "Writing for Short Film" (2019). Kaveh Daneshmand is an Iranian filmmaker based in Prague, Czech Republic. A graduate of film directing, Kaveh co-founded ÍRÁN:CI Film Festival in Prague in 2010 and has been active as the artistic director of the festival as well as a director and a writer. His first short film, Occasional Showers premiered at Fajr International Film Festival and won the best short film of the year in 2016 Writers and Critics Awards in Iran. His second short film, Alula, premiered at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival in 2019. Kaveh’s debut feature, Endless Summer Syndrome is at the stage of post-production and has won the KVIFF Works in Progress award at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2022. Steen Agro is a filmmaker originally from the UK, specializing in direction and screenwriting. He has produced a string of award-winning films including: (Feature) Shut Up and Shoot Me (2005), (Shorts) The Heretic (2020), Sirens (2019) and Mother’s Day (1999). During a successful career in commercials, Steen worked for some of the world’s biggest brands and shot more than 300 TV spots. He specializes in comedy both for stage and screen and continues his work as screenwriter, script doctor and director for hire in both the live action and animation industries, while also teaching at Prague Film School. Masa Hilcisin is a visual artist, and educator. She has been making documentary films, experimental videos, and other visual forms on personal narratives and social issues for more than 20 years. Her works have been screened and exposed at various film festivals and exhibitions around the world. Masa's professional background includes work for media, cultural and human rights organizations where her interests were centered around use of art as a social tool, and creative activism. In 2020, she started to work on a series of books for children dealing with stigma, prejudices, and stereotypes. Masa is a founder of the organization World Community Connect that aims to cultivate plurality of all people regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or age through community art projects, and visual storytelling workshops around the world. She holds a PhD In Film Studies and Audio-Visual Culture from the Masaryk University. Michael is an international director / cinematographer. Originally from South Africa he now lives in Prague where he primarily shoots and directs high-end TV commercials. He has served as a Director of Photography on 11 feature films, some episodic TV and he has directed and photographed hundreds of TV commercials. A feature film that he photographed, ‘Yesterday’ was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards in 2005. Thomas Krivy, son of Czech parents and brought up and raised in Germany, gained experience as a camera assistant in Berlin and at the Babelsberg Studios before earning his MA in cinematography from the Czech national film academy. He regularly works on narrative feature films, commercials, documentaries and music videos. Born in 1988, Turkey. He started theater at high school and he directed his first short film while studying engineering. He continued his studies for film directing and scriptwriting at the Prague Film School. There he shot his well-received short film Evicko. His short film Tuesday was screened in more than 100 festivals, including Cannes Film Festival (Official Competition). He’s the co-writer of Zuhal, directed by Nazli Elif Durlu. His debut feature Ela and Hilmi with Ali is awarded with more than 15 awards. He receieved the Best New Director individual award in Ayvalik Film Festival for his recent works. Demirel's Cat Fishing trilogy is in development. Robert Gottman is a master Avid instructor and has 21 years of experience at the university level teaching editing, sound and color in both the U.S. and Czech Republic. He served as editor at NBC and other television networks for 16 years, and has edited multiple Emmy and award-winning, internationally distributed programs including numerous dramas, documentaries, news specials, travel, sports, business programming, commercials and music videos. Luka Knezevic is a PhD candidate in film studies at the University of Zagreb and manages the post production facilities at Prague Film School. He is a graduate of Prague Film School (2012) and is an active writer/director. His latest short, Pressure Point, was completed in 2018 and screened at several international festivals (Myrtle Beach, TIFF Oda) Mary Angiolillo received her Masters in Philosophy from Marquette University and a Ph.D in Theatre Arts from Northwestern University, with further training in drama from L'Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq. She is twice recipient of a Fulbright Grant, for research in Paris and for teaching in Prague. For over 30 years, she has been teaching classes related to dramatic arts and communication (acting, directing actors, short form screenwriting, dramatic literature, creative dramatics, improvisation, public speaking and film studies). She has worked as a theatre director in Prague, Paris and Chicago, acted in both theatre and film, and served as an acting coach on films. Claudia Cazzorla is a costume designer known for her production and costume design work on the award-winning experimental film Asterión (2022) and for her collaboration on the Disney feature film Chevalier (2022). Her experimental representation of reality catches the various shades of costume and production design creatively perceived as a dramaturgical representation of the inner shades of film characters and space. She obtained her BA degree in costume and production design from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. Her studies continued at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milano. In Italy she experimented Theatrical studies to then enchase her film knowledge and creative prospective at the Academy of Performing Arts DAMU-FAMU. Claudia works as costume designer in within Europe and teaches costume and production design workshops at Prague Film School, Praha and CISA Film Academy, Locarno. Prof. Griffin has worked as Director of Photography for numerous films that have won the Academy Award, Emmy Awards and the Sundance Cinematography Award. Prof. Griffin has also worked as Director and Producer for numerous Narrative and Documentary films around the world. Prof. Griffin teaches Camera and Lighting at Prague Film School, as well as at the American University in Washington, DC. Prof. Griffin holds an MgA (MFA) from FAMU. Screenwriter, novelist and film producer. Winner of a Goya Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for “All Women” (2013, dir. Mariano Barroso). He has obtained two nominations for the same award for “Caníbal” (2013) and “El autor” (2017), directed and co-written by Manuel Martín Cuenca. He has also been nominated for the Goya for Best Original Screenplay for “While at War” (2019), with Alejandro Amenábar as director and co-writer, and “Adú” (2021, dir. Salvador Calvo). He has published three novels and is a screenwriting professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid and the Prague Film School in the Czech Republic. James Duff is a NYC based filmmaker and educator. His directorial and writing debut, “Hank and Asha,” won the Audience Award at the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival. It went on to screen at more than 50 international film festivals, winning more than 20 awards, including the CINE Golden Eagle Award for Best Narrative Feature in 2015. His award-winning short film, “Life is a Sweet,” screened at over 40 festivals worldwide. His documentary, “The Cycle Also Rises,” was broadcast nationally on PBS as part of the POV series. James spent two years in West Africa directing development and human rights documentaries funded by USAID. In the past year, James has shot projects in underserved nations for NGOs such as Photographers Without Borders in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Togo and Peru. He has taught film production in Kenya, the Tindouf refugee camp in the Sahara Desert, Senegal, India, the Prague Film School in the Czech Republic, and New York City. In the theatre, James has worked with New York companies such as Ensemble Studio Theatre, and has directed productions at such venues as The Cherry Lane Theatre and SoHo Playhouse, as well as the NYC International Fringe Festival. James recently was an artist-in-residence at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY. He earned his MFA in directing from USC's School of Cinematic Arts, where he won a fellowship for excellence in directing actors. Steve Reverand is a French-born and now Czech-based producer, graduate from Prague Film School. He co-founded in 2012 in Prague the production company "The LAB". Steve has been developing, producing and post-producing international fiction projects from short to feature films, with a focus on European-based hybrid genre narratives that can tap into a niche worldwide audience. Among the successful short film he produced are Kaveh Daneshmand's Occasional Showers (Best Short Film - Iranian Society of Film Critics’ Awards, 2016), Nicole Goode's Supine (Silver Méliès Winner 2019) and Rusty Lake: Paradox (6m views online). In 2020, he produced for The LAB his debut feature project as a film producer, the queer fantasy film Playdurizm (winner of the Jury Prize for Best Feature Film at LUFF 2020 and distributed internationally) Prarthana Gupta (Ana) is a Freelance Production Designer, Visual Artist, and Creative Designer from India, currently based in Prague, Czech Republic. With her background in Theatre, Psychology and Art, she is able to understand and create visual media that brings us closer to the human psyche in all its weirdness. Although young and new to the industry, she has designed various short films, music videos, commercials and feature films. While she works as a production design tutor, she also doubles as a sculptor and/or production designer for film and TV. Ružica Eterović is a PhD candidate at the University of Zagreb with research focus on performative arts, psychoanalysis, culture and ethics. She is currently finishing her doctoral dissertation with the theme of Jung's concept of evil and the ethical potentials of the art of acting. Her publication history includes film reviews in several newspapers and internet portals as well as a chapter in the book "Art as an Idea" (Zagreb: Centar za Vizualne Studije, 2021). She has been a part of the Kubus acting studio in Zagreb, as well as The Bear Educational Theater in Prague and is the co-author of the award-winning, independently produced play "Three Mothers" in Croatia. She lives and works in Prague For over 25 years Adam has worked with a diverse array of clients; from Tarantino to Lucas-films to Fortune 500 companies like Google, HBO, Sun, Deloitte and AOL. As Media Director for Stillking Films, he worked on a myriad of films, commercials and music videos, and led the company to Partner with bEurope. From creative to strategy, his work has been featured in the Czech National Gallery, as well as film festivals, exhibitions, and a variety of publications. His book Immersion (2023) was the first deep.art neural-network AI Graphic Novel. Producer, documentarian and writer Will Tizard studied film at Northwestern University before covering the crime beat for newspapers in California, then moved to Prague to become a freelance hack/wordsmith. He's covered the film industry and festival world for nearly 18 years for Variety, done a smattering of professional acting roles and stolen every idea, inspiration and technique he could from master screenwriters, DPs and directors he's interviewed. He currently works fulltime in multimedia at Radio Free Europe. Josef Pecak (cinematography) is one of the Czech Republic’s leading authorities on the art and physics of cinema lighting. Josef was the former Dean of FAMU during the golden years of FAMU’s birth of new generation Czech filmmakers (1992 - 1994). Martin Raiman is an award-winning Czech/German film & advertisement producer and co-founder of the 2012-established, Prague-based production company "The LAB". As a producer, Martin likes to focus on one-stop solutions both for films and branded media concepts, that are not only economically effective but also help productions to have the least possible ecological impact on our planet. Notable examples are the critically acclaimed multimedia project Rusty Lake: Paradox and the in-house developed genre bending feature film Playdurizm, winner of Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival in 2020. Neal Dhand is a writer, director, producer, and teacher from Philadelphia. He makes films that fall between genre and arthouse. Neal is currently finishing the feature DARK MY LIGHT, a revisionist sci-fi drama and thriller for the modern age, for a 2024 release. In summer 2023 Neal co-directed, produced, and starred in the feature film GENOA. Shot in the city of the same name, the film is a surrealist take on fatherhood. Neal’s short films include selections at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, Sidewalk Film Festival, Cinequest, and many others. His screenplays have placed in a variety of competitions, including the Nicholl Fellowship, Slamdance, American Zoetrope, and Austin. Neal has taught screenwriting, directing, producing, and film analysis at universities in Pennsylvania, New York, and the Czech Republic. He received his BA from the University of Chicago, and his MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Saimir Bajo is a award-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, director, dramaturge, producer, lecturer and scholar. His screenplays have placed in a number of prestigious festivals and competitions including Berlinale Co-Production Market, CineLink, Co-Production Market at Sarajevo International Film Festival, ALBAScript and Cineuropa, TIFForm and Torino Film Lab, Meeting Poit Vilnius, Zagreb DOX Pro, Creative Europe. His films have been screened at the most prestigious film festivals around the world. Recently, he has directed the fiction film The Violinist (2020) and is finishing the feature documentary: Tomas Venclova - Forms of Hope (2021). Saimir is developing his new feature film, Journey to Awakening, a co-production of Czech Republic, Albania, Slovenia, Italy. 
Gabriel M. Paletz, Ph.D.
Screenwriting
Diego Fandos
Screenwriting
Kaveh Daneshmand
Directing
Steen Agro
Directing / Introduction to Comedy
Masa Hilcisin, Ph.D.
Directing, Documentary Film, Experimental Cinema
Michael Brierley
Cinematography
Thomas Krivy
Cinematography
Ziya Demirel
Screenwriting
Robert Gottman
Editing, Sound
Luka Knezevic
Editing, Aspects of film language
Mary Angiolillo
Directing Actors
Claudia Cazzorla
Production Design
Gary Griffin
Cinematographer
Alejandro Hernandez
Screenwriting
James Duff
Directing
Steve Reverand
Production
Prarthana Gupta
Art Direction
Ružica Eterović
Finding Your Inner Voice
Adam Trachtman
Animation
Will Tizard
Screenwriting for TV
Josef Pecak
Cinematography
Martin Raiman
Production
Neal Dhand
Directing
Saimir Bajo
Directing, Documentary Film
Nancy Bishop is the founder and former head of the Prague Film School Acting Program. She now participates in the program as distinguished guest lecturer. She is a C.S.A., Emmy-nominated casting director, author, and acting coach. The following are just a few of the many Hollywood and other productions Nancy has cast for: Borat 2, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Snowpiercer, The Romanoffs, Euro Trip, Anne Frank, and many, many more. Nancy teaches a film acting technique, outlined in her book "Secrets from the Casting Couch.” Nancy and her coaching team are on demand internationally in Europe, North and South America and in countries as diverse as Turkey and Dubai. Amy Huck is a professional actress and director with numerous film and theater credits, as well as about 40 international commercials. Her film credits include Harrison's Flowers, From Hell, EuroTrip, The Omen 666, and Solomon Kane. She has also voiced numerous characters for a variety of projects, including video games, tv series, documentaries, and children's audio books. As well as working as an actress, she has been studying yoga for over 15 years, both in the US and Europe, and earned her teaching certificate in Thailand in 2007. Daniel Brown has worked as an actor and director with theatres in the U.S., Canada and Europe since 1982. His training includes commedia dell'arte, clown, improvisation, drama therapy as well as classical theatre. He has taught acting and lectured on theatre in places ranging from prisons in America to the Royal Shakespeare Company and Cambridge University in England. Arriving in Prague in 1998, Daniel has directed at various theatres in the Czech Republic (in Czech and English) and is the founder and Artistic Director of Divadlo Miloco. As an actor, Daniel has worked in films with such actors as Peter O’Toole, Bruce Willis, Ben Kingsley, Brenda Blethyn and Johnny Depp; he has filmed over 30 television commercials and currently is in his 9th season on the popular Czech television series Ulice. Daniel has worked as an acting coach for film and TV (including Anne Frank and Oliver Twist) and as a dialogue coach on many feature films. Daniel has a Masters degree from Cambridge University in the history and philosophy of science, specializing in the history of psychology and psychiatry. Brian Caspe is a professional actor who plays regularly in theater, TV, film and commercials. Motion pictures credits include Wanted, the Illusionist, Hellboy, Running Scared and Hannibal Rising. Brian also played a major supporting role in the NBC television series Revelations, opposite Bill Pullman. His most recent film is Solomon Kane with James Purefoy and Pete Postelwaite. In theater, Brian has gotten rave reviews playing in the lead in Oliver!, A Funny Thing Happened on The Way To The Forum, The Seagull, You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown among many others. Since moving to Prague in the spring of 2002, Brian has re-energized the Expat acting scene. In 2003, he founded the Prague Playhouse with the aim to give native English-speaking actors a company where they could perform and English-speaking audiences a venue to enjoy. Brian plans to tour in Ireland with The Sacred Sow a successful play he directed for the Prague Fringe. Brian also teaches Meisner technique which he studied in Los Angeles under Jeff Goldblum and Robert Carnegie (assistant to Mr. Meisner for 10 years). Over the past 4 years, many of his students have gone on to have successful acting careers and even more have learned to appreciate the power of living in the moment. Petra Johansson is an actress, director, theatrologist, pedagogue and even a screenwriter. She studied both in the Czech Republic and Sweden, which is her second home. Currently she is finishing her PhD at the Stockholm University. She has close to the physical theatre, especially the comedia dell’arte, which she studied in France. In Prague she appeared on the stage of the National theatre – Laterna Magika, she also worked for Městská divadla pražská and she plays and directs for the theatre Blama as well. 2018 she founded her own theatre group called Spolek Lek, where she stages her own plays and acts in them too. She also regularly appears in films and tv productions. Petra teaches physical acting as well as creative movement. Martin Kolda graduated from the Prague Dance Center conservatory and later from the Academy of Music Arts in Prague. He is the founder and director of the production company Art 4 People, which is involved in cultural events in the Czech Republic as well as TV shows. He is the manager of Prague Chamber Ballet. Howard Lotker is a founding member of HoME, an international theater company based in Prague, Czech Republic creating site-specific, participatory, public space, research, and other kinds of devised performances. Howard has directed and produced almost all of its productions within the past 6 years. He has a BFA in Acting (and Political Science) from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and his MFA in Authorial Acting and Pedagogy from KATAP, DAMU, Prague (CZ), where he also teaches Acting, Improvisation, Devising Theater, and Acting with the Inner Partner. Marc Cram is a founding member of Blood, Love & Rhetoric Improv (Prague, CZ), Dad’s Garage Theatre Co. (Atlanta, GA), and The Whammo Players (Tallahassee, FL). For over 30 years, he has taught and performed regularly in narrative-based group comedy improvisation. Marc has enjoyed developing new improv shows and formats, working with short and long-form improv. In film, television, commercials and theatre Marc has worked as an actor, improviser, puppeteer, musician, and as a commentator and emcee. As an improvisation instructor, Marc has taught from the Johnstonian school improv at dozens of theatres and universities across America, Europe and the Middle East including The Courtyard Playhouse (Dubai, UAE), English Lovers (Vienna), Improtresk and ZaPatra (CZ), and Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA). Marc is pleased to be returning to the dynamic Prague Film School for another exciting season of training. Jason Stone is a Speech and Dialect specialist trained in Knight-Thompson Speechwork. He holds an MFA in Directing from Long Island University and is an expert in the International Phonetic Alphabet. He has taught, acted, and directed in theatre and film all over the globe for two decades. Jason is dedicated to rigorous, positive, and inclusive training. History in action! Touch of sword! Steel in motion! The best fights for films, musicals and festival shows. Professional swordsmen, armourers and actors. Argo is a unique company which can create a flawless illusion of a real fight avoiding any slightest pain of the performers. The agency offers a full scope of services in preparation of film and theatre actors for demanding roles of fighters from different times including ancient, contemporary, far future and fantasy. The film armoury at 'Housuv Mlyn' has countless numbers of weapons, armours and props allowing to equip any film project. More info at agentura-argo.cz Luka Knezevic is a PhD candidate in film studies at the University of Zagreb and manages the post production facilities at Prague Film School. He is a graduate of Prague Film School (2012) and is an active writer/director. His latest short, Pressure Point, was completed in 2018 and screened at several international festivals (Myrtle Beach, TIFF Oda) Steen Agro is a filmmaker originally from the UK, specializing in direction and screenwriting. He has produced a string of award-winning films including: (Feature) Shut Up and Shoot Me (2005), (Shorts) The Heretic (2020), Sirens (2019) and Mother’s Day (1999). During a successful career in commercials, Steen worked for some of the world’s biggest brands and shot more than 300 TV spots. He specializes in comedy both for stage and screen and continues his work as screenwriter, script doctor and director for hire in both the live action and animation industries, while also teaching at Prague Film School.
Nancy Bishop
Program Founder, Faculty Emeritus
Amy Huck
Acting for Film Department Head
Daniel Brown
Acting, Improvisation, Physical Theater
Brian Caspe
Acting, Meisner technique
Petra Johansson
Physical Acting, Creative Movement
Martin Kolda
Movement
Howard Lotker
Stanislavky
Marc Cram
Improv / Alternative Techniques
Jason Stone
Speech and Dialects
Agency A.R.G.O
Combat
Luka Knezevic
Editing, Aspects of film language
Steen Agro
Writing for Actors
Masa Hilcisin is a visual artist, and educator. She has been making documentary films, experimental videos, and other visual forms on personal narratives and social issues for more than 20 years. Her works have been screened and exposed at various film festivals and exhibitions around the world. Masa's professional background includes work for media, cultural and human rights organizations where her interests were centered around use of art as a social tool, and creative activism. In 2020, she started to work on a series of books for children dealing with stigma, prejudices, and stereotypes. Masa is a founder of the organization World Community Connect that aims to cultivate plurality of all people regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or age through community art projects, and visual storytelling workshops around the world. She holds a PhD In Film Studies and Audio-Visual Culture from the Masaryk University. Gabriel M. Paletz, Ph.D (Screenwriting, Documentary, Film Comedy and Learning from Bad Films), with a BA from Yale University, is the first PhD graduate from the University of Southern California in film history, theory and film production. Dr. Paletz has taught film at the College of William and Mary, Duke University and USC. He has published numerous scholarly essays and articles, as well as pieces in popular journals like Variety. He has served on several film festival juries and as both historical consultant on the film Serena starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, and as visual storytelling consultant to the Ethiopian Aids Resource Center in Addis Ababa. He has just completed a book that reveals the connections between the multi-media innovations in the career of Orson Welles. As a film programmer, his recent series include "The Cinema of the Absurd," with new restorations from nine Eastern European national film archives, that has played in both Hong Kong and the U.S. National Gallery of Art, and "Creators of the Photoplay," a series dedicated to the great women screenwriters of Hollywood silent cinema. Thomas Krivy, son of Czech parents and brought up and raised in Germany, gained experience as a camera assistant in Berlin and at the Babelsberg Studios before earning his MA in cinematography from the Czech national film academy. He regularly works on narrative feature films, commercials, documentaries and music videos. Robert Gottman is a master Avid instructor and has 21 years of experience at the university level teaching editing, sound and color in both the U.S. and Czech Republic. He served as editor at NBC and other television networks for 16 years, and has edited multiple Emmy and award-winning, internationally distributed programs including numerous dramas, documentaries, news specials, travel, sports, business programming, commercials and music videos. Steve Reverand is a French-born and now Czech-based producer, graduate from Prague Film School. He co-founded in 2012 in Prague the production company "The LAB". Steve has been developing, producing and post-producing international fiction projects from short to feature films, with a focus on European-based hybrid genre narratives that can tap into a niche worldwide audience. Among the successful short film he produced are Kaveh Daneshmand's Occasional Showers (Best Short Film - Iranian Society of Film Critics’ Awards, 2016), Nicole Goode's Supine (Silver Méliès Winner 2019) and Rusty Lake: Paradox (6m views online). In 2020, he produced for The LAB his debut feature project as a film producer, the queer fantasy film Playdurizm (winner of the Jury Prize for Best Feature Film at LUFF 2020 and distributed internationally). Luka Knezevic is a PhD candidate in film studies at the University of Zagreb and manages the post production facilities at Prague Film School. He is a graduate of Prague Film School (2012) and is an active writer/director. His latest short, Pressure Point, was completed in 2018 and screened at several international festivals (Myrtle Beach, TIFF Oda)
Masa Hilcisin, Ph.D.
Directing, Documentary Film, Experimental Cinema
Gabriel M. Paletz, Ph.D.
Screenwriting
Thomas Krivy
Cinematography
Robert Gottman
Editing, Sound
Steve Reverand
Production
Luka Knezevic
Editing, Aspects of film language
