ROB TREGENZA, PhD, Professor
Prof. Pierre-William Glenn and Prof. Rob Tregenza during the La Femis and VCUarts Cinema 35mm co-productions in May 2008. This was part of the VCU French Film Festival.
Rob Tregenza has written, directed and photographed three award-winning independent feature films, films that have been screened at the Cannes Film Festival in the “Certain Regard” category and the Berlin Film Festival in the Panorama section. Over the years, his films have also appeared at the festivals of Toronto, Sundance, Rotterdam and Edinburgh.
His work has been positively reviewed in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times and by such prominent critics as Vincent Canby, Dave Kehr, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Roger Ebert. A retrospective of his feature films was shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. in 1999. But perhaps the highest recognition has been the attentions of one of the most important European Directors of the 20th Century, Jean-Luc Godard, who hand-selected Tregenza’s Talking to Strangers to screen again at the 1996 Toronto International Film Festival. Godard describes passages in Tregenza’s films as “remarkable and at times astonishing, that is, softly imbued with the marvelous.” He further explains that in Tregenza’s cinematic world, “reality walks hand in hand with fiction.”
The essay, “Cinq Lettres a et et sur Rob Tregenza” (Five Letters to and about Rob Tregenza) appears in the book Jean-Luc Godard: Documents, published in 2006 by the modern and contemporary art institution of Paris, Le Centre Pompidou. Tregenza has also had an award-winning career as a television commercial director and cameraman for clients like IBM, DuPont, CSX, Blue Cross Blue Shield and numerous non-profits and has worked as a Director of Photography for other independent filmmakers such as Bela Tarr and Alex Cox.
Rob has shot extensively in Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, Spain and the United Kingdom. He received his PhD from UCLA and is Founder and Director of the Tampa International Film Festival
MARY BETH REED, MFA, Assistant Professor
Mary Beth Reed’s films have screened in major national and international festivals including the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Denver International Film Festival, MadCat Women’s Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Her films Moon Streams and Montessori Sword Fight both premiered at the New York Film Festival in Views from the Avant Garde . Recent shows include a Cineprobe at MoMA, a show with Colorado filmmaker Robert Schaller at the San Francisco Cinematheque, shows in Europe with filmmaker Courtney Hoskins, and shows in Japan during the Stan Brakhage Retrospective.
Mary Beth studied independent and experimental cinema at the University of Colorado at Boulder where she received her BFA/BA in film and art history. She received an MFA in film from Bard College in 2001. In 2007 Reed graduated from the California Institute of the Arts with another MFA in animation. She has taught film production at the University of Colorado and for three years she worked closely with Stan Brakhage.
Jodie Keeling of Austin Cinemaker Coop has said, “Reed’s Floating Under a Honey Tree stands as a testimony to filmmaking as an artistic process. Through close attention to detail in optical printing and hand processing, she creates films of exquisite color and imagery that dance across the screen with a mesmerizing rhythmical quality that is uniquely her own.” Reed continues to create narrative and experimental films combining hand-painting, animation, traveling mattes and hand processing.
Her films are distributed by Canyon Cinema and Filmmaker’s Co-op and are in the permanent film collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
KIRK KJELDSEN, MFA, Assistant Professor
Professor Kjeldsen on the set of "The River."
Kirk studied cinema at the University of Southern California, where he received an MFA in screenwriting and was a student of Frank Daniel’s. He also studied cinema, writing and economics at Lafayette College and Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in Germany. He was a finalist or semi-finalist in a number of screenwriting fellowships and competitions, including AMPAS’ Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting; he has also optioned and developed material for both Hollywood and independent producers, and his most recent work includes a script he co-wrote with Aaron Henry that was optioned by independent director/producer Jason Wulfsohn.
While attending USC, Kirk was a development assistant at the Sundance Institute and later worked in other development positions. He also worked on television shows that include NBC’s “Whoopi” and FOX’s “The Inside.” In addition to film and television work, Kirk studied theater at HB Studios and is a co-founder of the White Horse Theater Company. He developed material at the LAByrinth Theater Company’s 2009 Summer Intensive and has had workshops and staged readings of his plays at LAB’s “Punching the Clock” month of new play development in 2010 and Kitchen Dog Theater’s 2010 New Works Festival.
Kirk has also worked extensively as a journalist and has been a freelance and staff reporter and writer for a number of publications. He has taught writing and film at both universities and non-academic settings, and he has also worked as a research analyst, a construction laborer, a night watchman and a California-licensed racetrack pari-mutuel.
CHARLIE HARRIS, MFA, Adjunct Assistant Professor
Professor Harris on the set of "The River."
Charlie Harris has been working in the film industry since 1986 and has worked on over 50 feature films and TV movies as well as hundreds of commercials. He has worked on films including The New World, Hannibal and The Blindside as key rigging grip, best boy rigging grip and grip.
He received his BA in Mass Communications from VCU and his MFA in Film Production from Boston University.
Charlie is an adjunct professor at VCU. He teaches workshops on introduction to the camera department, basic lighting, camera movement, and advanced camera. He is also an adviser for the summer intensives.
ART ENG, BFA, Adjunct Assistant Professor
Professor Eng on the set of "The River."
Professor Eng has been an award winning Director of Photography for over thirty years and has also owned and operated Red Eye Camera Rental in Baltimore, Maryland. He has a wide range of professional and artistic experience in motion picture feature film photography and digital imaging and lighting for national television spots and docudramas. He received 16 Emmy Awards for television spots shot in Philly, Baltimore and Washington.
Prof. Eng worked on indie features such as John Water’s POLYESTER, HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW, INSIDE/OUT and also major Hollywood films such as ROCKY 5. For the Dino De Laurentis Entertainment Group he worked on PRANCER and BEDROOM WINDOW and numerous shows in Wilmington, North Carolina. For twelve years, he was an official White House cinematographer for Presidents Reagan and Bush.
As a BFA art student, at the Maryland Institute College of Art, he studied photography with Ansel Adams, glass blowing with Gale Chihuly and also cultural studies with Dr. Margaret Mead.
