Developing the Narrative Foundation of Your Screenplay (On Demand)

David Schwab, is a screenwriter based in New York City. Since 2014, Mr. Schwab has been an adjunct professor of screen writing at the Graduate Film school at Columbia University. He has also taught at the French film program, La Femis.

Mr. Schwab received his MFA in Film from the Columbia University School of the Arts. His thesis script, Mr. Verner’s Pygmy, was purchased by Scott Rudin. Since then Mr. Schwab has written for, among others, Warner Brothers, Animal Logic, Hollywood Pictures, Propaganda, HD Net Films, and Paramount Pictures.

Mr. Schwab was the 2014 Sundance/Sloan Commissioning Grantee for his script, Francis Turnbull – which was also selected for the 2013 Hampton Film Festival writer’s lab. Francis Turnbull is being produced by Oren Moverman (The Messenger, Love and Mercy, Time Out of Mind) and Wren Arthur (Prairie Home Companion). Jennifer Fox (The Tale, Beirut: The Last Home Movie) will direct. Mr. Schwab recently completed Kaczynski a TV pilot about the Unabomber for SightUnseen pictures. Oren Moveman will direct.

Destin Daniel Cretton is a Hawaiian-born filmmaker known for directing the films Short Term 12 (2013), The Glass Castle (2017), and Just Mercy (2019), as well as the Marvel Studios films Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) and the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026).

Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, novelist, and educator. His feature adaptation of the book SAVAGE GRACE for Killer Films and director Tom Kalin, starring Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne as mother and son, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for a Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. His other films include AUGUST, starring Josh Hartnett, Naomie Harris, Rip Torn, and David Bowie, and Joe Gould's SECRET, which opened the 2000 Sundance Festival.

Rodman is past president of the Writers Guild of America West; professor and former chair of the writing division of the USC Cinema School; and a member of the National Film Preservation Board.

Rodman's television credits include several episodes of the Showtime anthologies FALLEN ANGELS and THE HUNGER for directors Tony Scott, Steven Soderbergh, and Tom Cruise. Rodman has also written for Errol Morris, Clive Barker, David Lynch, Chantal Akerman, Maurice Sendak, and John McTiernan. In October 2013, Rodman was named a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. He's in the FinalDraft Screenwriters Hall of Fame alongside Guillermo del Toro, Quentin Tarrantino, Callie Khouri, Nancy Meyers, Aaron Sorkin, Robert Towne.

Among his current projects are an adaptation for Amazon of the Jean-Patrick Manchette thriller 3 TO KILL with producer Chris McQuarrie; a sprawling, lavish 19th-century anti-colonial adventure novel, THE GREAT EASTERN, published in June 2019 by Melville House, and an adaptation of said novel for UK's Great Point Media. Earlier this year Rodman was on the writing staff of THE IDOL, premiering on HBO on Sunday nights in November, created by Sam Levinson (EUPHORIA) and The Weeknd.

Academy-Award nominated film director Mira Nair is best known for her groundbreaking films that cross borders of all kinds: SALAAM BOMBAY! (Caméra D’or, Cannes 1988), the pioneering Asian-African romance MISSISSIPPI MASALA (1991), Golden Globe & Emmy-winning HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS (2001), and the international hit MONSOON WEDDING (2001), for which she was the first woman to win Venice Film Festival’s prestigious Golden Lion. Also known for her literary craftsmanship of subcontinental fiction, Mira has filmed THE NAMESAKE (2006), THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST (2012), VANITY FAIR (2004), A SUITABLE BOY (2020) and QUEEN OF KATWE (2016). Her most recent endeavor was directing MONSOON WEDDING THE MUSICAL, which opened in New York City in May 2023 and is bound for Broadway. Nair’s next film will be AMRI, an experimental portrait of Amrita Sher-Gil.

An activist by nature, Nair founded Salaam Baalak Trust for Indian street children in 1988 and the Maisha Film Lab in 2004, a free school to train filmmakers in Africa. In 2012, she was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour. 

Sterlin Harjo is an award winning Seminole/Muscogee Creek filmmaker who has directed three feature films and a feature documentary all of which address the contemporary Native America lived experience, set in his home state of Oklahoma. 

Harjo is a founding member of a five-member Native American comedy group, The 1491s and is currently in development on various projects, including RESERVATION DOGS that he created with Taika Waititi. His latest film, a feature documentary titled LOVE AND FURY, chronicles the work and intersection of over a dozen contemporary Native American artists. 

Tamara Jenkins is the writer and director of the films Private Life, The Savages, Slums of Beverly Hills as well as several award winning shorts. Among the honors she has received are an Academy Award nomination, an Independent Spirit Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

Ms. Jenkins attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she received her MFA and met her husband, the screenwriter, Jim Taylor, with whom she occasionally writes. Jenkins lives in NYC with Jim and their daughter, Mia.

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.