On September 12, NYFA’s Los Angeles campus of the New York Film Academy saw 238 students turn into graduates as they held a virtual commencement ceremony for former NYFA students to collect their degrees and officially becoming alumni of NYFA.
Director, producer and screenwriter Bill Duke recorded a special message to NYFA students encouraging them to use this unique time in history to use their gifts and work together as a community after graduation. NYFA Los Angeles also introduced its first student speaker Maya Maria Riquelme Balmaceda (MFA Filmmaking), who addressed her peers on this milestone achievement. Students also were shown a graduation video that was streamed during the ceremony.
Graduating Class of 2020
1-Year Acting for Film
Ugwumsinachi Adeife Adeniran, Kimberly Campbell, Leticia Carminati, Caleb Jon Robert Cash, Giovanna de Oliveira Carvalho, Tyler Erart Ebanks, Taiga Hironaka, Neha Jauhar, Kunyarat Karnchanasej, Melisa Lopez, Dylan Marcus Lorenzo, Luca Marcelino, Astrid Nutta Lilli Morberg, Maria Alejandra Ordonez Ramirez, Bruna G Portugal Martins, Maria Fernanda Rico Sapien, Kassandra Valenzuela, Anuschka van Lent, America Vasquez, Matthew Martin Vey, Braxton DeMarco Wells, Spencer Whitlock, Giovanna Xavier
1-Year Photography
Daniel John Phillips, Alejandra Andrea Sone
1-Year Animation
Shaela Payne
1-Year Cinematography
Omkar Avinash Gharat, Gaurav Hemant Jain, Jianyu Li, Piyush Thoravat
1-Year Filmmaking
Jason Aguirre, Mohamed Alsalman, Rodrigo Gomez, Albina Kim, Eva Zehan Liu, Joshua Long-Ellis, Chit Ho Ng, Christopher Perez, Roy Shellef – Sleptzoff, Daniel Karl Martin Sundler, Joshua Michael Wallace, Wanqi Zhang
1-Year Producing
Olga Beres, Sara Bothe, Fangda Du, Kexian Li, Rinati Rokach, Sai Praseedha Uppalapati
1-Year Screenwriting
Marika Anna Lena Folkesson, Madhav Goyal, Islambek Kaliyekov, Thomas Ralf Kirschner, William Mellon, Gabriela Ono, Mercedes Shaw, Alejandra Toledano
AFA Acting for Film
Shuting Li, Kalen Blaine Massengill, Padge James Mattaliano, Ryan A. Payne, Jarren Terrell Weaver
BFA Acting for Film
Nellie Bislamyan, Tullia Ferraro, Megan Elizabeth Galloway, Leonid V. Formaziuk, Kayla Greyling, Tyler Hampton, Lara Heine, Marina Kofman, Xinyao Huang, Dannae Hunter, Cody Mango, Allyson Ledford, Ju Li, Ruiqi Liu, Alexandra Victoria Moreno-Banovich, Laura Pannier, Megan Perreault, Sara Sedran, Haoning Yang, Nestor Jairo Sierra, Shelby Sporl, Alexandra Stepanova, Yunxi Zhang, Alexandra Maria Roth-Rosenthal, Joshua Samuel Flashman, Farida Mohamed Abdel Meguid Mohamed Abdel Aziz, Ahsan Siddiqui,
BFA Filmmaking
Matthew DiGiaimo, Friedrich Frauendorf, Leandro Gualdi Farina, Shiyin Nan, Ainur Abilkaiyr, Joshua Adeyeye, Selbi Jumayeva, Ting Jiang, Anton Kristensen, Natalie Pluto, Gabriel Ramirez, Avery Stanislaw, Hyejin Sunwoo, Torey Thompson, Nicolo Azzaro, Brett Cameron Belanger, Dexter Brown, Yili Cai, Ricardo Castillo, Shuqin Chen, Iván Colón Arroyo, Drake Dalgleish, Linyi Lan, Destinee Easley, Alexander K. Figueroa Hooper, Elisa Fowler, Carol-Lyn Garcia, Jaquelin Garza, Maria Valentina Gomez, Brian Grobmeier, Sohail Sanjeev Grover, Praveen Gunasekaran, Sean Hale, Yuduan He, Walter Hermosa Jr., Haowen Hsu, Hei Long Hung, Jin Jia, Roujun Lu, Kristina Kim, Brendan Kimmet, Brendan Miske, Jihyeon Lee, Kaiyi Niu, Yuen Yan Leung, Jordan Lewin, Ashton Arthur Shemet, Javier Lopez, Yutong Zhu, Bin Luo, William Giminaro, Saumya Mohta, Valeriya Mashynets, Seojin Park, Dominique Pembleton, Bryce Powell, Mia Redwine, Pablo Sanchez, Wiktoria, Wozniak, Rui Yao, Zizhao Yu, Yue Yu, Changyi Yu, Yunfei Zhou
BFA Screenwriting
Jonathan Cribas, Andria Dawson, Sharon Lovell, Douglas Rich, Lana van Beek
BFA Game Design
Jason Khoury, Perry Sharp
BFA Photography
Onyenaturuchi Joeann Ogbonnaya
MFA Animation
Kaiyuan Zhou
MFA Cinematography
Zijian Han, Zixun Jin, Zhuangzi Liu, Jiayi Sun, Darko Mohammed, Mayur Patankar, Nishanth Shri Shiva Prabakaran, Yaxu Xing, Mervyn Titus, Oskar Urbaniak, Juan Valencia IV, Meng Zhang
MA Film and Media Production
Ruijing Chen, Harsh Bhatia, Byrrh Barry Lovon Bryant, Xinqi Guo, Joseph Deeks, Tian Lan, Siyu Song, Sneha Sunil Menon, Jingnan Yang, Imani Williams-Sparks, Jing-Hsuan Wu, Hanxiao Zhang, Siming Zhu
MA Producing
Muyin Tang, Noemi Durivou, Katchusca Gonzales Lopes, Xuejiao (Scorpio) Liu, Valeriia Nikulina, Ramona Pojoga, Paphitchaya Suesat, Zhirui Wang, King Wong, Yiming Zhao
MFA Documentary Filmmaking
Kari McGuire, Khalila Yuniarto Suprapto
MFA Filmmaking
Jessica Ackerson, Eric Alt, Yufan Chai, Linzhou Dai, Wanxin Ding, Nanshan Guo, Mohamed Hammad, Xiaotian Hou, Tianqi Ji, Jason Jones, Shelby Jones, Kai Shiuan Lai, Songhuan Li, Haocheng Li, Zhengda Lyu, Yuan Ma, LaDerrian Meredith, Jenny Mochahari, Amy Nigro, Maya Maria Riquelme Balmaceda, Meng Chan Sam, Yimeng Shao, Filippos Tsapekis, Guan Chen Wang, Yinyue Wang, Yuanhua Wang, Yukun Xing, Kunqi Yang, Yi Yang, Ainamkoz Yemzharova, Hengrui Zhang, Haoxian Zhu
MFA Screenwriting
Arthur Boiron, Kurt Devonshire, Selena Fitzgerald, Pierre Gilson, Katherine Gregory, Damilola Ketiku, Alexandra Talavera Mendez