Core Filmmaking Foundations

Born and raised in Manila, Marie Jamora was the Producer/Director on the UNT. AVA DUVERNAY PROJECT for Starz. Marie recently directed an episode of the MATLOCK reboot starring Academy Award and Emmy winner Kathy Bates, as well as GREASE: RISE OF THE PINK LADIES for Paramount+. Her short film, FLIP THE RECORD, won the Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Short at Urbanworld and was shortlisted for the 90th Academy Awards. Her other short film HARANA was made at AFI's Directing Workshop for Women and won the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Narrative Short at the Sarasota Film Festival. Her first feature, WHAT ISN'T THERE (ANG NAWAWALA), premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival and is considered a cult classic coming of age film in the Philippines. Her TV directing credits include QUEEN SUGAR (OWN), THE CLEANING LADY (FOX), ALL RISE (OWN), THE RESIDENT (FOX), and both seasons of FIRE COUNTRY (CBS).

She graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in Film, where she learned Directing the Actor from director/author Lenore DeKoven and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Marie was Adjunct Directing Faculty for eight years in the Philippines and for three years at the American Film Institute. She is one of the leaders of the DGA’s Women’s Steering Committee’s Squad Mentorship program, the founder of Cinema Sala, her non-profit community organization, and proudly one of the few Filipinos in the Director’s Guild of America.

Simon Sohel TaufiQue is an Emmy-nominated, award-winning British-Indian producer and film composer based in NYC.

A dedicated alumnus of the Sundance Film Festival, his films include the Dramatic Directing Award-winner Ricky (2025) and the 2026 Nominee Run Amok. His recent slate includes the studio film The Alchemy of Being Okay, directed by Sundance fellow Sarah Mohk. TaufiQue's festival accolades also include the Berlinale Forum Prize-winner She’s Lost Control and the Tribeca Untold Stories grand prize-winner, Land of Gold.

As a producer and composer, his credits span auteur-driven work, including the Emmy-nominated documentary The Interpreters, to studio projects such as Imperium (starring Daniel Radcliffe and Toni Collette) for Lionsgate/Universal, Amazon Originals (The New Yorker Presents), and HBO MAX (Weight of Gold). He has collaborated with acclaimed directors including M. Night Shyamalan, Cary Fukunaga, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Mary Harron and 2022 Oscar-nominee Jessica Kingdon.

Simon is a fellow of the ASCAP/Columbia Film Composing Lab and the Gotham Episodic Producing Lab. He currently teaches producing at NYU and leads the Core Producing course for the Sundance Institute’s Collab program. An Oscar-qualifying festival juror and BAFTA diversity committee member, he is a member of the Producers Guild, the Television Academy, and serves on the board of the Composer Diversity Coalition. TaufiQue is represented by IAG and records for the Warner-Chappell label. His work has been profiled by NPR, Medium and NBC News.

Trey Ellis is an Emmy and Peabody winning filmmaker, American Book Award Winning novelist, playwright, essayist and Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Most recently, he is an Executive Producer of the HBO documentary TRUE JUSTICE: BRYAN STEVENSON'S FIGHT FOR EQUALITY and last year’s KING IN THE WILDERNESS also for HBO.

He has written dozens of scripts and teleplays including the TUSKEGEE AIRMEN for HBO, and GOOD FENCES for Showtime, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the PEN award for Best Teleplay of the year. His works have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He is the author of the novels, PLATITUDES, HOME REPAIRS and the American Book Award Winning, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, as well as the memoir BEDTIME STORIES: ADVENTURES IN THE LAND OF SINGLE-FATHERHOOD. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Playboy, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, GQ, Vanity Fair and NewYorker.com and he has contributed audio commentary to NPR’s All Things Considered. His play, FLY, was commissioned by the Lincoln Center Institute and continues to be performed around the country including in Washington, D.C.’s Ford’s Theater, the Pasadena Playhouse and the New Victory Theater in New York.