Jake Mahaffy

Biography

Jake Mahaffy enjoys teaching students the technical and creative aspects of filmmaking to help them execute the best versions of their concepts and develop a solid discipline. Focus is on visual narrative, story structure and naturalistic performances so that students can apply their skills in whatever career, practice, genre or platform they pursue.

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's self-produced, low-budget shorts and features were made single-handedly, featuring untrained actors in rural settings. War was shot on a 16mm, hand-cranked, silent movie camera over five years in northwest Pennsylvania and premiered at Sundance. The no-budget feature Wellness, about a man trying to succeed in a business that doesn't exist, was shot on digital video and won Grand Prize at SXSW.

Coming to filmmaking from the visual arts and a no-budget, independent model, he is experienced in all aspects of production: writing, directing, cinematography, visual design, editing and production management. More recent projects combined with professional actors and crew have also screened internationally. His film Free in Deed, shot in Memphis and based on a true story about a man trying to perform a miraculous healing, won a Lion at Venice. More recently, Reunion, an esoteric story about a highly dysfunctional family, was produced in Wellington (NZ).

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 State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. He also 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 has supervised dozens of graduate (MA/MFA) theses in directing, screenwriting, producing and non-fiction, including some award-winning student projects that were recognized at Sundance, Show Me Shorts, Berlinale Talent Campus, the Venice College, Taipei Golden Horse Labs, NZFC, Unishorts and the New Zealand International Film Festival.

University classes he's taught at the undergraduate and graduate level 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 among others. He has organized public speaker events, film series and workshops with guests including Werner Herzog, Jane Campion, Richard Linklater, Dennis Hopper, Andrew Bujalski, and Kelly Reichardt, among many other dozens of industry professionals (ADs, editors, writers, producers) and independent artists.

He has 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), Toi Whakaari and others.