Faculty & Staff
David Mallin
Film Program Director, Associate Professor
David Mallin is a cinematographer, filmmaker, and the Director of Old Dominion University's Film Program since 2013. He has a MFA in Cinematography from AFI in Los Angeles and a BA from American University in Washington D.C. David focuses his work with students on the production of collaborative group and faculty-led projects run like real-world movie sets, with the belief filmmaking can only be learned experientially. Here at ODU, David was the Writer/Cinematographer/Producer of the short film Our Nation (partially funded by ODU's first grant from the National Endowment for the Arts); the Cinematographer/Producer for the film 18 Mornings, the Cinematographer for the feature film The Ballerina, Executive Producer and Cinematographer for the short film Carmelita - ODU's first 35mm film project - and Cinematographer for the short films Bay, The Beat, She Survivor, Spears of Pink, and Still Water. He was also 2nd Unit DP and the primary ODU leader for the theatrically released feature film American Dreamer, directed by Derrick Borte and starring Jim Gaffigan and Robbie Jones, now available on AppleTV and other platforms. All of these films were created in conjunction with ODU's Film Program, utilizing David's model of Departmental Productions. David has also sailed twice as a staff member of Semester at Sea, and spent 5 years working for The American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival.
Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi
Assistant Professor
Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the Old Dominion University. She holds a Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Kansas. She has authored several articles and book reviews, and her book chapters have been included in such anthologies as Bodies in Transition in the Health Humanities: Representations of Corporeality(Routledge, 2019) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge, 2021). Dr. Moradiyan-Rizi's research interests include: Middle Eastern cinemas (with a special focus on Iranian cinema); documentary film; global women's cinemas; transnational film and media.
Priya Vashist
Priya Vashist is a film editor, writer, and director. Priya received her MFA in Cinema Production from San Francisco State University. Priya works in various genres and styles of filmmaking including narrative, documentary, and experimental. Her work focuses on representation of queer people of color on screen. Her short film Touching Shadows is currently in festival circuit. She is also directing a Netflix documentary titled Hotel Motel Patel which is in production.
Carolina Conte
Carolina Conte has a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Arts - Film/Theater, a M.A. in Film and a M.A. in International Studies from Ohio University, and a B.A. in Communication from PUCRS (Brazil) - and she is working on her M.A. in English Literature started at Stockholm University (Sweden) in 2016. In her twenty-years career in film, television and theater production and education, Carolina has worked independently, and for several companies, institutions and projects in the U.S.A., Brazil and Europe. In NYC, she was a freelancer videographer and editor, and developed off-off Broadway theater productions. In Jacksonville, FL, Carolina was the Head and Instructor of the Jacksonville University Film Program, teaching also for the University's Summer Study Abroad Program in England. In Chicago, IL, she worked as a Studio Editor for the Big Ten Network. Currently, Carolina is a Film Lecturer at ODU, and an event freelancer/contractor for SMT-Video Production Services.
Harvest Bellante
Harvest Bellante earned her undergraduate degree in English from UC Berkeley, and went on to receive an MFA in Film and Television Production from Chapman University. While at Chapman, she worked on numerous film productions and directed six of her own films. She served as a Marion Knott Scholar, and was awarded a grant to direct and produce her script, Inspiring Charles Dickens. Dickens screened at multiple film festivals and was awarded a Grand Festival Award. Harvest relocated from California to Virginia in 2009 and currently teaches Screenwriting courses at ODU.
Alan Campbell
Born in Britain, Dr. Alan Campbell brings a distinctively international perspective to the classroom. Always animated and engaging, he holds five degrees and has lectured on as many continents. His work includes theoretical and applied Film and Communication courses taught at the baccalaureate and graduate level at both public and private institutions. His former employers and clients have included NBC, Orion Pictures, Post-Newsweek, Viacom and CBS. He has written, directed and produced, but is just as comfortable performing before the camera or microphone and as an impassioned musician and composer fronting for various bands.
Stephanie Cooke
Stephanie Cooke is an Emmy Award-winning TV Producer, a writer, and a speaker based in Virginia Beach. She's currently the Executive Producer and Film Critic on the Hampton Roads area's #1 lifestyle and entertainment show - The Hampton Roads Show on WAVY-TV 10. Cooke has been writing and producing television for more than 20 years. Before joining WAVY, she spent nearly six years at CNN and CNN Headline News producing various entertainment features, specials, and live events including Academy Award coverage and Emmy Award coverage. She also worked in Tennessee as a broadcast radio News Director and reporter, and producer and reporter for Headline Clarksville. She holds a BA in English/Creative Writing from the University of Hawaii.
Kevin Crawford
Kevin R. Crawford is a working writer, executive producer. He earned his PhD. in Media Communication with emphasis in film and the MFA in creative writing. He has authored more than a dozen award-winning screenplays. He is also President and CEO of Peloton Entertainment. Kevin bounces between L.A. and Norfolk, Virginia where he teaches screenwriting and undergraduate film studies courses at Old Dominion University. He also teaches and designs distance learning courses for CLT and the Department of Communication & Theatre Arts. Dr. Crawford is a member of the American Screenwriter's Association, WGA-IWC, ASIFA-Hollywood, one of the longest-operating chapters of ASIFA, promoting the art and industry of animation. His published works range in scope from professional and trade periodicals to newspaper and scholarly journals. His latest projects include a novel, a recent feature-length production now in distribution, three big screen adaptations under contract or in various stages of development, and a popular trade version of his own dissertation on the legendary work of Hollywood Director Christopher Nolan.
Diane Fine
Ms. Fine has been a professional screenwriter and "script doctor" in Hollywood for over 20 years. A graduate of the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television, Diane has written or co-written six produced feature films as well as many TV and movie scripts for other producers and studios. Her credits include Storm starring Martin Sheen and Luke Perry, Firetrap starring Dean Cain, Lori Petty and Mel Harris, Art Heist starring Ellen Pompeo and Billy Baldwin, and Purgatory Flats starring Brian Austin Green, Nick Turturro and Gregg Henry. The BET movie-of-the-week she co-wrote, Fire & Ice, starring Kadeem Hardison and Lark Voorhies, was one of the highest-rated in BET's history and was nominated for an NAACP Image award. She has taught screenwriting, creative writing and elements of storytelling courses to children, teens and adults in Los Angeles and Norfolk.
Joan Grossman
Joan Grossman is a filmmaker and published scholar based in Brooklyn, New York. She works in documentary, video installation, and video for live performance with projects in Europe, Africa, Russia and China. Her work has been screened in more than 20 countries and at more than 50 film festivals. Her book, BLACKOUT: On Memory and Catastrophe, was published by Atropos Press and examines the limits of representation in the context of historical trauma. She has taught at universities around the country as a visiting filmmaker and professor, and teaches online courses for ODU. She is currently working on a new documentary in San Francisco about the gay liberation activist, Hank Wilson.
Deborah Wallace
Deborah Wallace is an Emmy-nominated Producer, Writer, Director, and Performer working in both film and theatre. She has collaborated as a Producer on many films including the Academy Award nominated, Emmy winning documentary film, Gasland. Deborah produced its sequel Gasland, Part II for HBO, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2013 and went on to win the Environmental Media Association Award for Best Documentary, Cinema Eye Honors and an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Research. In addition, Wallace produced the films The Sky is Pink, Divest, Occupy Sandy, and How To Let Go Of The World And Love All The Things Climate Can't Change which was released by HBO in 2016, Artists Against Fracking (for Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon), and Brave Girls which premiered at DOCNYC in 2018. She produced and co-wrote, Blood on the Mountain, which was released by Netflix in 2017, honored by the International Documentary Association, and for which she received a second Emmy nomination for Outstanding Historical Documentary.