Meet the Faculty and Staff
Laura Colella, Faculty Chair
Laura Colella is both an acclaimed filmmaker and an experienced teacher. Her third and most recent narrative feature film, Breakfast with Curtis, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival last June, and is currently touring the festival circuit. It has won three awards to date, and was recently nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. With her second feature Stay Until Tomorrow, Laura was a Sundance Institute Directing and Screenwriting Fellow. Her films have cumulatively screened at over 100 festivals and venues internationally, winning over 20 awards. Laura is represented by Julien Thuan at United Talent Agency and her first two features are distributed by Netflix and Passion River Films. Laura studied filmmaking at Harvard University. She has been awarded numerous fellowships and grants, and was one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. She freelances as a screenwriter, cinematographer, camera assistant and editor, and has been teaching Film Production and Directing at RISD since 1996. She currently also teaches Screenwriting at Brown University.
Laura Colella Wins Grant from Film Independent...read the full press release here.
Nina Davenport, Documentary
Nina Davenport has made five feature-length documentary films, all of which have won 
awards at film festivals, been broadcast on television stations around the world, and received critical recognition. Her first film, Hello Photo (1994), a poetic and cinematic essay about her travels in India, premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and won “Best Documentary” at Melbourne. Her second film, Always a Bridesmaid (2000), a humorous and poignant account of her love-life, aired on HBO/Cinemax and on Channel Four’s “True Stories”. Davenport’s third film Parallel Lines (2003), a lyrical road movie about her journey from California back home to New York in the aftermath of 9/11, premiered at IDFA and aired on the BBC series “Storyville”. Operation Filmmaker (2007) explored the relationship between filmmaker and subject, as it followed an Iraqi film student who traveled from war-torn Iraq to a Hollywood movie set: it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and aired on the PBS series “Independent Lens”. First Comes Love (2012), which follows Davenport’s journey into motherhood, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012 and will be broadcast on HBO in July, 2013. Davenport studied filmmaking at Harvard College (B.A., 1990), where her mentors were Robb Moss, Ross McElwee, and Robert Gardner. After graduating from Harvard, she became a Teaching Assistant in the Visual & Environmental Studies Department, where she taught students about all aspects of film production. Davenport has given talks at many universities and institutions, such as The New School and The Smithsonian and has been a fellow at Yaddo and The Bogliasco Foundation. She is the recipient of numerous grants, including from the National Endowment for the Arts and Harvard’s Film Study Center. She has worked as a cinematographer on many independent films.
Read about Nina and First Comes Love recently showcased at the Rotterdam Film Festival.
Till Schauder, Documentary
Till Schauder wrote, directed and photographed the documentary The Iran Job,which is currently in release in the U.S. and Europe. The Iran Job is a critical success and audience favorite from this established filmmaker. Schauder also wrote and directed the award-winning road movie Strong Shit, for ARD/SWR Germany, and the acclaimed action thriller City Bomber. After earning a government grant for the arts he relocated from Berlin to New York and made his U.S. directorial and acting debut with the romantic comedy Santa Smokes, which won several international awards, among them Best Director at the Tokyo International Film Festival. His docu-drama Duke’s House about Duke Ellington’s Harlem home premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Till teaches film at NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies and is a frequent guest speaker at other film schools. His honors include winner of Paley Center for Media Documentary Pitch competition, Best Director at Tokyo International Film Festival, Studio Hamburg Newcomer Award granted by German TV and Film Producers (NDR, ARD, RTL, SAT 1), Audience Award at the Berlin Beta Film Festival, DAAD Scholarship for the Arts (granted to fine artists and filmmakers by the German Foreign Ministry), International Max Ophüls Film Festival Reader’s Award, Jury Award at the Kelibia International Film Festival/Tunisia and Audience Award at the Göttinger Filmfestival.
Terence Nance, Feature Films
Terence Nance is an artist born and raised in Dallas, Texas. He comes from a family of artists. Terence studied visual art and his practice includes installation, performance, music, and moving images. Terence makes music under the name Terence Etc. The music draws on influences like Stevie Wonder, Kronos Quartet, Dilla, Leadbelly, and Thelonius Monk. His first feature film, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, is an IFP Narrative lab alumnus and premiered in the New Frontier section of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The album of the same title will be released with the film in 2013. The film has garnered Terence recognition from Filmmaker Magazine, where he was selected as one of the 25 new faces of independent film. Oversimplification… also won the 2012 Gotham Award for “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You.” The film has since been aquired for theatrical distribution by Variance film and will premiere in theaters on April 12th followed by a DVD and Digital release by Cinema Guild.
In addition to his personal work, Terence is also an accomplished music video director having collaborated on short films and music videos with Blitz the Ambassador, Cody ChesnuTT, and Pharoahe Monch to name a few. Terence currently resides in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn – along with the rest of The Swarm and is currently developing his sophomore feature, The Lobbyist.
Terence's movie An Oversimplification of Her Beauty releases to theaters nationwide April 26, 2013. Click here for more information about the film.
Dan Schrecker, Animation and Visual Effects
Dan Schrecker is an award winning visual effects artist and animator. He is the Creative Director and Visual Effects Supervisor at Look Effects, Inc., with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver, Canada and Stuttgart, Germany. Dan earned his Master’s Degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and his BA in Visual and Environmental Studies with a focus on Animation from Harvard University. Dan was nominated for a BAFTA Award in 2011 for Best Special Effects for the film Black Swan and for Visual Effects Society Awards for Black Swan, The Wrestler, The Fountain, and Frida. His work includes being Visual Effects Supervisor on Life of Pi, Warm Bodies, Moonrise Kingdom, Limitless, Black Swan, Precious, The Fountain, Frida and Requiem for a Dream. He is currently working on Noah with Darren Aronofsky. Through his career Dan has supervised and created visual effects, designed titles and motion graphics, adding to his expertise in multimedia and interactive formats, traditional cel animation and claymation.
Tammy Marie Dudman, Animation
Tammy Marie Dudman (T. Marie) is recognized internationally for developing and honing a process that manipulates the intrinsic properties of a pixel to create Time Based Pixel Paintings and Time Based Pixel Drawings. Her international career has included ten world premieres at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival. In 2007, she was selected as one of the “best new young artist in the U.S.” by the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Arts in New York. In 2011, T. Marie’s work was cited as one of most memorable films of the year by Moving Image Source, a publication by The Museum of Moving Image in New York. In 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 T. Marie’s works were cited in Senses of Cinema’s “best films of the year” World Poll. She has been a Senior Critic in the Film, Animation, Video Department at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) for twelve years. At RISD, she teaches in an internationally recognized animation department that was awarded “Best Student Animation Show Reel” in 2008 and 2009 at the Ottawa International Film Festival. Tammy is currently a Visiting Artist in the Animation Department at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. T. Marie is equipped with a wealth of technical knowledge, adept in world cinema, contemporary art, film/video, animation and new media discourse, practice and theory.
Brandon Cole, Screenwriting
Brandon Cole is a screen writer and playwright whose work has appeared throughout the world for more than three decades. He has written a variety of productions which have been performed at prestigious international theater venues. His play, Nothing Works, was performed at the Teatro da Trindade, in Lisbon, Portugal, and was subsequently produced for Portuguese and Brazilian television.
Cole and actor John Turturro have collaborated on many projects, most notably, their critically-acclaimed film Mac, for which Turturro won the Camera d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1995, they adapted John Fante’s My Dog Stupid for Peter Falk, and collaborated on the award-winning Illuminata, based on Cole’s play, Imperfect Love. He is a recipient of a playwriting fellowship from the New York State Foundation for the Arts.
Cole also collaborated with the independent film director, Alexandre Rockwell, whose film, In the Soup, won the Grand Jury Prize at The Sundance Film Festival. Their latest collaboration, Pete Smalls Is Dead (2011), stars Peter Dinklage, Steve Buscemi, Michael Lerner, Tim Roth, Rosie Perez and Mark Boone Jr. Cole wrote and directed the New York Independent Feature, OK Garage, starring Lili Taylor, Will Patton and John Turturro. OK Garage won best screenplay at the Avignon, France, Film Festival.
Cole is a lifetime member of The Writers Guild of America, East.
Stephen Pite, Program Director
Stephen Pite has developed nationally and internationally recognized programs of innovation in design and filmmaking in the US, China, and Mexico. Stephen began his career at the School of Visual Arts where he earned a BFA and became director of admissions and continuing education. He earned an MA from Columbia University and then migrated to Los Angeles to create special programming and marketing for the Southern California Institute of Architecture. SCI-Arc’s graduate architecture faculty, students and alumni are world-recognized for their experimental approaches to design pedagogy and iconoclastic architectural praxis.
Stephen continued his interest in innovative pedagogy by earning a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education with minors in evolutionary ecology and visual anthropology at the University of Kansas. He was recruited by educational think-tank The Ross Institute, and since, has been a creative director, a professor of design, film, and cultural studies, and a department chair of digital filmmaking, design and interactive media. Stephen authored a widely-adopted college text, The Digital Designer and has written and produced award winning screenplays, documentaries, and narrative shorts.
© Vermont College of Fine Arts :: 2013