Jake Mahaffy

Biography

Mahaffy's films have won awards including Orizzonti Prize for Best Film at Venice and Grand Jury Prize at SXSW along with other screenings (including Sundance (2004/05/06/08/09/15), prizes and nominations from the IFP Independent Spirit Awards, Gothams, Moas, Stockholm, Munich, Seattle, Nashville, Malatya, Rotterdam, AMPAS Student Academy Awards, Newport... among others. He has been awarded grants and fellowships from Guggenheim, Belaggio, Annenberg, Sundance Institute, Cannes Atelier, Rome New Cinema, Shanghai Market, Creative Capital, LEF, NZFC, Kodak, Verizon, NHK and others.

Mahaffy studied fine art and film at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), foreign languages at Brown University, and directing at the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. He attended the Sundance Writer, Director and Producer Labs. As a professor he founded and led two new filmmaking programs at Hollins University and Wheaton College, as well as developing curriculum and a new BA degree program in Screen Production as Program Coordinator at Auckland University in New Zealand.

He's been invited to consult, speak, teach and mentor internationally including at Cal Arts, RISD, AFTRS (Sydney), Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing), China Film Archive, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Bard College, Belaggio Research and Conference Center, University of Virginia, Beijing Film Academy, Museum of Contemporary Art (Warsaw), Advanced Director's Course (Moscow), Park Road Post (Wellington), Melbourne Accelerator Panel, South Auckland Writer's Lab, Big Screen Symposium (NZ), and Toi Whakaari.

Classes taught include Visual Storytelling, Production Management, Screenwriting, Advanced Directing, Advanced Project Seminar, Directing Performance for Screen, 16mm Film Production, Observational Drawing, World Cinema, American Cinema, and Russian Cinema. Graduate (MA/MFA) supervised theses include award-winning student projects recognized at Sundance, Show Me Shorts, Berlinale Talent Campus, the Venice College, Taipei Golden Horse Labs, NZFC, Unishorts and New Zealand International Film Festival.