MaryAnn Talavera

Assistant Director, Virtual Production

MaryAnn Talavera

MaryAnn Talavera is an NYU alumna, polyglot, and filmmaker. After working in Tisch Special Programs for 8 years, she recently took on the role of Assistant Director in the Martin Scorsese Center for Virtual Production. MaryAnn is an adjunct professor at the New School, where she teaches XR world-building and a member of Onassis ONX Studio. She is the co-founder of the ORIXA Project, a mixed reality installation and live performance experience celebrating the African Diaspora. MaryAnn is a 2024 BPMplus Fellow and her short film, axé meus ancestrais, was chosen as one of the immersive projectes presented at the 2024 Pitch Black Forum hosted by Black Public Media. Passionate about the forefront of storytelling and immersive media, MaryAnn joined the Future of Storytelling Explorer's Club in 2023.  She was also an artist in residence at Barnard College's Movement Lab where she presented the ORIXA Project..

She joined the Special Programs office after working in the Professional Prizes Department in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. MaryAnn helped manage the Alfred I. duPont and the Maria Moors Cabot journalism awards. Having cultivated a passion from an early age for cross-cultural communication, she studied film and foreign languages as an undergraduate student in NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Later she conducted research on Brazilian media for her Master’s degree at New York University’s Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies.

Born in the Dominican Republic, MaryAnn caught the travel bug early on. She studied abroad for the first time on a student exchange program in Naples, Italy. She returned to Italy with NYU in Florence and would later study abroad in Paris, Salvador da Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro. Building on that love of travel, she spent five years living in Okinawa as a language teacher for the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme. MaryAnn is excited to pass on her passion for virtual production to future MPS VP students.

EDUCATION

New York University
Master of Professional Studies
Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)
Tisch School of the Arts
New York, NY

New York University
Master of Arts
Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
New York, NY

New York University
Bachelor of Arts
Film & Foreign Languages
Gallatin School of Indiviualized Study
New York, NY