David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic ArtsMFA in ScreenwritingOnline

David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts

“Meditate and Create!”

- David Lynch

David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts

Six ways we’re different

Consciousness-Based℠ Education
Dive into the ocean of pure consciousness – the source of all creativity
“Big Fish” Process
Take your idea from the initial sparkling moment of cognition all the way to completion.
Midwest Creative Capital
Join world-class artists, producers, entrepreneurs and philanthropists in a distraction-free, highly focused environment
Visionary Filmmaking
Realize your vision in silence and with clarity. Develop a project with impact
Collaborative Studio Atmosphere
Team up in our friendly, low stress environment…a naturally collaborative atmosphere
Real-World Experience
Complete a professional-level project, uniquely qualifying you for industry opportunities

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Faculty

John KloepferDirector of the MFA in Screenwriting, Assistant Professor of Screenwriting

John Kloepfer is an LA-based author, editor and screenwriter. He grew up in Buffalo, NY, where he attended the Nichols School before graduating from Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts. He studied literature and film at Amherst College, graduated cum laude from University at Buffalo’s Media Studies department and recently earned his MFA in Screenwriting from the David Lynch School of Cinematic Arts at Maharishi International University.

He has published twelve middle grade novels with HarperCollins and developed book properties with Alloy Entertainment, now a subsidiary of Warner Bros. His novels have sold over half a million copies worldwide. Since moving to Los Angeles in 2015, he has worked closely with his wife, TV writer and executive producer Jenny Lee, editing the nationally best-selling YA novels Anna K and Anna K Away, pitching to major studios including Disney+ and Universal, and assisting with the development of multiple television and feature projects for MAX, Netflix, Paramount+ and Apple International.

When he’s not writing and editing, you can probably find him shooting baskets at Rustic Canyon Park while his Newfoundland dogs look on with great curiosity, throwing darts in the West LA dart league, catching a movie at Century City or renting one (yes, he still rents physical media) at CineFile Video.

Amine KouiderChair, Department of Cinematic Arts & New Media, Assistant Professor of Cinematic Arts & New Media

Amine Kouider is an award-winning filmmaker, Chair of the Department of Cinematic Arts and New Media, and a founding member of David Lynch Foundation Television. He has worked as the producer, director, director of photography, and editor on projects around the world, including subjects such as high-security prisons, street children in Colombia, homeless men in New York City, refugees in Uganda, Buddhist nuns in Thailand, and Pandits in India.

His works include the feature-length Rue Des Vandales and a surrealist narrative short film, The Land of Nothing. Amine is a Transcendental Meditation teacher who teaches the TM and the Creative Process course as part of the David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts.

Matthew KalilAssociate Director of the MFA in Screenwriting, Adjunct Professor of Screenwriting

Originally from South Africa, he earned his MA in Screenwriting from the Northern Film School in Leeds (United Kingdom), and he has been teaching and mentoring students for over 20 years. Matthew has lectured at institutions worldwide, such as the University of Cape Town, AFDA Film School, NYU Tisch School of The Arts, and York University in the UK.

During this time, he developed a unique system that helps screenwriters get in touch with their creative core, as described in his book, The Three Wells of Screenwriting, published in 2018 by Michael Wiese productions, with a foreword by Christopher Vogler.

Matthew has written and co-written numerous screenplays and over 40 produced episodes of television. He has directed 17 short films and two documentaries: Fight Night, which was screened worldwide; and Porselynnkas, which challenged notions of narration. His TV directing work can be seen in the fictional crime series Interrogation Room and the reality series The Ride: Season 3. His productions and collaborations have been screened and broadcast in Canada, Denmark, Morocco, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Kenya, South Africa, Thailand, the United States and the United Kingdom. He is also the author of the children’s books Helga’s Big Splash and Grandpa Farouk’s Garden.

Matthew has appeared on multiple panels on screenwriting and creativity and has presented at the annual University Film and Video Association in Minneapolis, the London Screenwriting Festival and the Cape Town International Animation Festival.

Katrina O'GilvieAdjunct Assistant Professor of Screenwriting

Storytelling is Katrina's passion and coming from Jamaican, Irish, and Puerto Rican descent, she is proud to write with a wide range of exciting and diverse characters. Growing up in a family of legacy artists who broke through color barriers to become some of the firsts in this industry, she has perspective and appreciation for the journey.

Katrina O'Gilvie grew up between New York City and the South of Spain, where her father produced live Jazz concerts, and her mother was a singer. She fell in love with the film industry at an early age and followed that passion to film school at The New School University in NYC.

Seeking the warmer climate of her childhood, she moved to LA and became a feature development assistant at Imagine Entertainment before working for Aaron Sorkin on SPORTS NIGHT. While raising her children, Katrina worked in production, wrote a pregnancy book, was a feature writer for LA Parent Magazine, and completed her first novel. TV One produced three of her movies, including the award-winning and NAACP Image Award-nominated Rosa Parks movie, BEHIND THE MOVEMENT. She proudly wrote on the first season of SWAGGER for Apple TV. During the height of the pandemic, she sold a pilot, ACTIVATION to CBS, and wrapped on the third season of the legal drama, ALL RISE, airing on OWN.

Katrina lives in the Hollywood Hills with her partner Brian and their rescue dog, Nina. Between them they share five (grown-ish) kids and a very large vegetable garden.

Josh BilligAdjunct Assistant Professor of Screenwriting

Josh Billig is an internationally produced playwright and screenwriter. His plays have been included as finalists for The O’Neill Playwrights Conference, WordBridge Playwrights Lab, The Princess Grace Fellowship, The Smith Playwriting Prize, and his play Outside Sitka was the recipient of the Tennessee Williams Festival Playwriting Award. His musical Radio 930 began its pre-Broadway run in 2021. He’s the co-creator of Dramaworld, an original, award-winning series available for streaming on Freevee.

Aleksandra SzczepanowskaAdjunct Assistant Professor of Screenwriting

Aleksandra Szczepanowska is a Polish-born, NYC-based writer and director. As a multilingual (Polish, English, French, and Mandarin Chinese) political refugee from a closed military state, Szczepanowska is attracted to themes of isolation, dislocation, disconnection, the interaction of mixed heritages, and nonverbal forms of communication. She is attracted to thriller, mystery, monster, and sci-fi genres. Many of her stories also draw from her experiences working in environment, energy, and security in Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Szczepanowska wrote, directed, produced, and starred in her first feature film, TOUCH (2020), a romantic thriller, which she shot in China and in Mandarin Chinese. TOUCH was sold to HBO Europe and distributed internationally by Indie Rights (US). She holds an MFA from the consciousness-based David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts, where she was mentored by David Lynch, Neal Marshall Stevens and JV Hart among others. Szczepanowska also holds a BA in Political Science and MIA in International Energy Management from Columbia University. She lives in New York City with her husband and three children.

Alex KustanovichAdjunct Assistant Professor of Screenwriting

Originally from Belarus, Alex Kustanovich is a film and television writer, screenwriting instructor and story consultant. He has written feature films for producers in the US, Canada, Germany, Estonia, Israel, Japan and Russia. Several of the films have been produced and a television show he co-created is currently under option with Eitelsonnenschein, a production company in Berlin, Germany.

He’s been a screenwriting instructor at the college level for over twenty years, and is currently mentoring screenwriting students in the MFA in Creative Writing program at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY, and in the MFA in Screenwriting program at the David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts (online). He has conducted writing workshops in New York City, Tallinn, Estonia, and Moscow, Russia.

Alex has a BFA in Film Production from NYU, a screenwriting certificate from AFI and an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA.

Adam NadlerAdjunct Assistant Professor of Screenwriting

Adam Nadler is a screenwriter and independent filmmaker. His movie The Magic Violin, distributed by Tapestry International, has been shown on The Movie Channel, on multiple overseas broadcasts and at the premier of Lincoln Center’s “Movies for Kids” series. His film Five Card Stud was produced in a master class with Martin Scorsese and won a Gold Apple from the National Educational Film & Video Festival.

In 2002, he completed the feature-length comedy Shoot George, which appeared at the Woodstock Film Festival, the Anthology Film Archives' New Filmmakers series, and won the Best Narrative Feature Award at the Arlene’s Grocery Picture Show.

In 2013, Adam co-wrote and directed A Wake-up Call, a 10-minute trailer for a feature film about the Syrian-Jewish community in Brooklyn, currently in development as The Girl with Pink Hair, with Susan Seidelman attached to direct.

Adam has taught classes in film editing, production, and directing at the City College of the City University of New York. And, since 2005, he has been an adjunct professor of screenwriting at New York University's School of Continuing Studies. In 2013, he was honored with NYU's Service Torch Pin. He also provides screenplay consultations for private clients. Adam has an MFA from New York University's Graduate Film School, where he received several honors, including the Best Comedy Award, the Best Graduate Editor Award and the Warner Brothers Fellowship. Adam has been on staff at Vanity Fair magazine since 2003.

Neal Marshall StevensAdjunct Assistant Professor of Screenwriting

A Graduate of NYU’s Graduate School of Film and Television, Neal Marshall Stevens has been a working professional for close to 30 years. He began his career as a writer and Creative Consultant/Story Editor for Laurel Entertainment’s syndicated Series, Monsters which aired from 1988 to 1991. He went on to work as Laurel’s Senior Story editor on such projects as The Vernon Johns Story, Precious Victims and Steven King's The Stand.

Later, Neal went on to work for Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment, specializing in Direct-to-Video productions. Over the course of his association with Full Moon, he’s worked on over 30 motion pictures in a variety of genres, including science fiction, children’s fantasy, and especially horror, including three entries in the popular Puppetmaster series. He also directed the feature Stitches for Full Moon Entertainment.

Neal sold the original screenplay Deader to Dimension Pictures, which was later produced as Hellraiser: Deader and wrote the screenplay for Dark Castle's feature remake of Thirteen Ghosts. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Joel ThompsonAdjunct Assistant Professor of Screenwriting

Joel Anderson Thompson is a writer-producer for television. Joel’s writing credits include “Boomtown,” “House MD,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “Falling Skies,” Co- Creating and showrunning SyFy’s “Superstition,” Co- Executive Producer on “Krypton”. Most recently he worked on Apple TV’s third installment of the WWII limited series “Band of Brothers”, and co-executive produced “Roswell, NM”. Between projects, he gives writing seminars on a part-time basis with USC and UCLA-Extension, among other institutions.

Raised in Chicago with doctors in his family, Joel left medical school to receive an MFA in writing for film, theater, and television at New York University. On the path to becoming a professional writer, his day jobs ranged from story analyst for Icon Pictures, Village Roadshow, and Gerber Productions, to teaching in the Compton Public School System, copy/content writing for e-commerce and being a professional mayonnaise taster for Kraft Foods — while secretly hating mayonnaise.

He’s also sold pitches to various networks including CBS, HBO Films, and Disney’s Stage 9 Productions. Joel is presently developing, among other projects, an international crime story show for Macro Studios.

Andreas HalskovAdjunct Assistant Professor of Screenwriting

Andreas Halskov is a prolific writer. He has penned numerous articles and books on film and television, including a monograph on David Lynch and two interview-based English books on Twin Peaks and modern television drama. In 2025, he will publish a new book called Directed by Milos Forman: An Oral History of His Life and Films, this book is based on interviews with more than 100 of Forman’s closest friends, relatives, and collaborators. Finally, he is an expert and staff writer for the biggest Scandinavian encyclopedia (Den Store Danske), and he works as an editor of the scholarly film journal 16:9.

Andreas is also an external lecturer at Aarhus University in Denmark. He has taught courses on Film History, Film Theory, and Media Studies for many years, and currently, he teaches two international electives on Film Culture and Global Perspectives on Cultural and Creative Industries. Apart from lecturing at Aarhus University, he has also taught at The University of Copenhagen and Aalborg University, and he has been a recurring guest lecturer at various institutions, including Newcastle University, DIIS, and the Screenwriting Line at The University of Southern Denmark. He also organizes and teaches courses at Folkeuniversitetet, including lengthy and quite popular courses on Twin Peaks and “Masters of Cinema.”

He has co-organized various TV industry seminars and festivals (including the TV festival Aarhus Series). He also works as a programmer and curator at the two biggest arthouse theaters in Denmark (Cinemateket and Øst for Paradis), introducing films and organizing comprehensive retrospectives of the films of David Lynch. Milos Forman, and Hal Ashby.

Vy Vincent NgoAdjunct Assistant Professor of Screenwriting

Vincent's thesis script – Hancock – opened July 2nd 2008, starring Will Smith and produced by Michael Mann. The film made over $625 million worldwide. He has been writing and script-doctoring for director Tony Scott for over ten years, including The Warriors for MTV and Paramount Pictures. Among his other credits, he has developed television for FOX, CBS, ABC, DISNEY and for producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

He is the founder of Early Risers Media Group in Vietnam, a film company that has produced multiple box-office hits like De Mai Tinh, Long Ruoi, Qua Tim Mau, and De Mai Tinh 2.

He continues to write and produce films in Asia and the US and is currently writing an original TV series called Early Risers and a feature film for Columbia Pictures called Yellowjacket.

Vincent graduated with an MFA from UCLA Film School in 1993.