The Graduate Film Department is pleased to announce its 2019 Alumni Mentoring Program. The Department has hired five alumni to serve as consultants for our current third year students, to help guide them through the process of transitioning from students to working professionals in the film and television industry. Please see the list of 2019 Alumni Mentors below:
Julius Pryor
Julius Pryor
Julius Pryor with Marttise Hill is the co-founder of Pryor Hill Productions, which focuses on creating compelling and diverse content by filmmakers from underrepresented backgrounds.
Julius received his Bachelor’s in English Literature from Morehouse College and his MFA in Film Production from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Julius has taught courses on producing, screenwriting and directing at the Tribeca Film Institute and the Ghetto Film School in New York. He is a Sundance Institute Labs alumni.
Laura Valladao
Laura Valladao
Laura Valladao is a cinematographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her passionate interest in light and deep connection to community inspire storytelling rich with honest and stunning visuals. She shot the short film "My Nephew Emmett,” which won the student Academy Award in 2017 and went on to be nominated for an Oscar. Her most recent feature, "Premature," premiered in the NEXT program at Sundance 2019. Laura also shoots commercials and loves to work in new places whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Shawn Snyder
Shawn Snyder
Shawn Snyder grew up in South Florida. After receiving a BA in Religion from Harvard, he spent most of his twenties on the road as a singer/songwriter.
The last seven years have seen a return to Shawn's long-standing passion for filmmaking, during which he completed studies at NYU's Graduate Film Program. His short film, “Festus,” won the 2014 CINE Golden Eagle Award for Best Student Drama and later premiered on KQED’s Film School Shorts. His follow-up, “Lulu,” premiered at the Palm Springs International ShortFest in 2015. And his first feature, To Dust, premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the “Narrative Audience Award” and Shawn received the award for “Best New Narrative Director.” The film will be released theatrically in 2019 by Good Deed Entertainment. To Dust was a part of IFP's 2015 Emerging Storytellers, the recipient of the NYU/Alfred P. Sloan’s $100K First Feature Award, the winner of TFI's 2016 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize, and included in the NYU Production Lab's inaugural slate. Shawn is also a former IFP/Marcie Bloom Fellow and Sundance Institute Feature Film Fellow, and was one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2016.
WEBSITE: www.shawnsnyderfilm.com
Ashley Michel Hoban
Ashley Michel Hoban
Ashley Michel Hoban is an award-winning writer, director, and producer. She grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, where she watched too much television. She began her career working in Programming for Tribeca Film Festival, while writing and directing short films of her own. After earning her MFA from NYU's Graduate Film Department, she worked as an Associate Producer for Marco Polo (Netflix), which took her to three continents over two years of production. She is currently a writer and producer for HAPPY! (SYFY), where she gets to shoot in the coolest dark alleys of New York. In 2018, she was granted the Richie Jackson Artist Fellowship. She is based in New York, where she still watches too much television.
B.Monét
B.Monét
B.Monét is a writer/director who graduated from Spelman College with a BA in English. She hails from Silver Spring, Maryland and holds an MFA from New York University in Film and Television with a concentration in writing and directing.
Her films pose questions about identity, society, race and culture; and it is vital to her that underrepresented people are shown in film, media and television.
Her award-winning short film "Q.U.E.E.N." has screened at over a dozen festivals, including Cannes Short Film Corner, and premiered on Magic Johnson's channel ASPiRE. Additionally, she was a runner-up in the First Time Female Filmmakers Contest with Women and Hollywood.
She was named the 2017 Horizon Award Winner at the Sundance Film Festival, is a recipient of the Adrienne Shelly Foundation grant and a directing fellow for Film Independent's residency program, Project Involve. Additionally, she is one of the winners for the #NewView Film Competition with Glamour and Girlgaze, which champions the voices of female filmmakers.
She directed a branded short film entitled, “She’s Revolutionary” on the #MeToo founder Tarana Burke for Levi’s and Girlgaze. Most recently, she was selected as one of the winners for the Queen Collective in partnership with Queen Latifah, Tribeca and P&G.