Film & Visual Storytelling

Miles Engel-Hawbecker

Miles Engel-Hawbecker is a writer/director from Baltimore, MD. He graduated from Towson University in 2014 and is currently finishing his debut feature film. When he isn’t at BSA, he is teaching at Towson University and writing his next feature film.

Rain Pryor

Rain Pryor director, writer, wife and mother. Pryor is truly brilliant performer. Her performances are considered thought provoking through truthful storytelling, and she has spot on mimicry, which landed her to be nominated by the NAACP three times. She won an NAACP for her irreverent solo show “Fried Chicken & Latkes, and for her role as the evil stepsister in the Michael Jackson produced musical Sisterella. She was nominated for the prestigious ADELCO Awards for her Off Broadway run at the National Black Theatre in Harlem.

Her writing and performance in her award winning solo show lead to a television development deal with Norman Lear, the creator of The Jef- ferson’s and All In The Family. And she is currently in pre-production for her film directorial debut, to be filmed in Baltimore MD, and Nigeria. Pryor was nominated for the African American Literary Award in 2007 for her biography Jokes My Father Never Taught Me, Life Love & Loss With Richard Pryor.

William “B.L.” Strang-Moya

B.L. Strang-Moya is the founder and Creative Director of the Ocean City Film Festival. He graduated from Towson University in 2017 with a BSc in Electronic Media and Film. Outside of the classroom, B.L. works as a videographer and documentary filmmaker, spanning a variety of subjects.

Ray Thress

Ray Thress is an animator and product designer from Baltimore, MD. They graduated from University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in 2021 with a BFA in Visual Arts & Animation. Outside of the classroom, Ray creates merchandise for their small business and various short-form animation content

Thomas Ventimiglia

Thomas Ventimglia teaches Screenwriting for the Charles C. Baum Film & Visual Storytelling Department and English for the Academic Department. He is a graduate of New York University, Johns Hopkins University, and Queens College, City University of New York. In 2014, he co-directed The Founders, a documentary about the founding of The Baltimore School for the Arts. In 2017, his feature screenplay When We Fall earned a development grant from the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund, where he is a fellow. His fiction has appeared in magazines such as The Baltimore Review and The Potomac Review. Currently, he is completing Turf Valley, a comedic web series about dads.

Chris Yakaitis

Chris Yakaitis is a Writers Guild of America Award-nominated television writer and a 13-year veteran of David Simon’s Blown Deadline Productions. He worked on The Wire, Treme, Show Me a Hero, and most recently as a writer-producer for The Deuce. A Baltimore native, he holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Princeton University and a Master of Journalism degree from the University of Maryland.