CREATIVE WORK
My creative work is grounded in storytelling as a form of inquiry into culture, community, and lived experience. Since my promotion to Associate Professor in 2019, this work has operated across three interconnected scales: individual filmmaking and screenwriting, collaborative student production, and the leadership of creative infrastructure through the Blackbird Film Festival. Together, these efforts reflect a sustained and evolving program of creative inquiry that responds not only to disciplinary practice, but also to broader cultural and historical conditions. Whether through films, festivals, or student-centered creative initiatives, my work emphasizes peer review, public engagement, and the creation of meaningful spaces for stories to be shared and experienced.
#1. Creative Leadership & Cultural Infrastructure
Blackbird Film Festival 2016 - Present
Founded in 2016, the Blackbird Film Festival represents the most significant and sustained component of my creative inquiry. More than a venue for film exhibition, Blackbird functions as a curatorial, organizational, and community-based creative practice that examines how stories are shared, contextualized, and experienced. Leading the festival—particularly during the COVID-19 years, when I reimagined the event across multiple formats rather than suspending operations—required sustained creative problem-solving and cultural stewardship. Blackbird has now operated continuously for over a decade and serves as a regional hub for filmmakers, students, and audiences, demonstrating creative inquiry not only in content, but in the design and preservation of cultural space.
Included below is a comprehensive Festival Impact Statement drawing on ten years of more than 280 verified filmmaker reviews submitted through FilmFreeway, the world’s leading film festival submission platform. Together, these external evaluations document the Blackbird Film Festival’s sustained relevance and meaningful role within the broader creative landscape.
#2. Collaborative Creative Production
ProLab Initiative 2018 - Present
The ProLab, which I launched in 2018, is an optional, co-curricular production initiative that functions as a semester-to-semester creative engine at SUNY Cortland. Separate from required coursework, ProLab allows motivated students to collaborate with me on the full lifecycle of filmmaking—writing, production, post-production, and festival exhibition. Since 2019, ProLab has produced more than 25 short films, several of which have been officially selected by regional and national festivals. This work represents a sustained model of creative inquiry in which authorship, mentorship, and peer-reviewed dissemination are inseparable, offering students real-world creative stakes while advancing my own collaborative filmmaking practice.
#3. Individual Filmmaking & Screenwriting
Narrative Practice
Alongside my leadership and collaborative work, I maintain an active individual creative practice as a filmmaker and screenwriter. My short film The Catch (2019) received 18 official festival selections and multiple awards, including Best NY Short at the Adirondack Film Festival and the Audience Choice Award at the Syracuse International Film Festival, and was featured on Mountain Lake PBS. I have also continued to write original narrative work, including feature-length and short screenplays. While the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted traditional exhibition opportunities and shifted my creative focus toward sustaining cultural infrastructure, this individual practice remains central to my identity as a filmmaker and informs both my teaching and collaborative production work.