OUR STAFF
Jay Craven
Producer & Director
Jay established Semester Cinema in 2006 and has led each iteration through 2024. He has written, directed and produced eleven feature films, six documentaries, a regional Emmy-winning comedy series for public television, and four variety shows for public radio. His films have played Sundance, Lincoln Center, the Cinémathèque Française The Constitutional Court of Johannesburg, Cinemateca de Venezuela and others. He was selected as one of 6 U.S. filmmakers by the American Film Institute, Kennedy Center, National Endowment for the Arts, and the President’s Committee on the Arts - to representing in the first-ever AFI:20/20 international cultural exchange to China, France, Peru, Venezuela, Israel, South Africa, Kazakhstan and Turkey. Awards include the Golden Gate Award, Producers Guild of America NOVA Award, Vermont Governors Award for Excellence in the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts' American Masterpieces and finalist for Critics Week for the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.
Julie Sexeny
Producer
Julie is Associate Professor of English and Chair of the Department at Wofford College where she established a Film & Digital Media Studies program in 2016. She teaches courses in filmmaking, film studies, surveillance and sexuality. Her script, 20 minutes of action, a look at the impact of campus assault on a young woman and her family, was a finalist in the 2019 Creative World Awards Screenplay Competition, and her feature adaptation of a memoir by the renowned New York author and National Book Award finalist, Vivian Gornick, is currently in development. This past spring she worked as a Producer and Assistant Director on the Semester Cinema 2024 project, Major Barbara. She holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Film, Psychoanalytic Studies and Cultural History from Emory University, an M.F.A. in Screenwriting from Columbia University and a B.A. in English from Barnard College.
Nicole Doerges
Producer
Nicole is a 2022 Wellesley College graduate and FAMU abroad alumna who participated in the 2022 iteration of Semester Cinema as a student and worked as an emerging professional on the 2024 Semester Cinema production of Major Barbara - as a writer, producer, script supervisor and senior residential life coordinator. Nicole assists with recruitment, student relations, fundraising research and development, locations, budgeting, and pre-production coordination. She also participates in story and screenplay development.
Sascha Stanton-Craven
Editing Mentor & Script Development Consultant
Sascha Stanton-Craven won Wesleyan University’s prestigious Frank Capra award for “outstanding comedy” and was co-writer on the recent Major Barbara screenplay. He is a consultant on story and script development as well as a faculty mentor in editing. Sascha is a Peabody Award-winning film editor whose credits include The Onion, HBO’s Emmy-nominated documentary comedy How To With John Wilson, the Orion Pictures/MGM comedy Bad Trip, Johnny Knoxville’s Paramount Pictures/MTV release Jackass Forever, and Adult Swim’s On Cinema and Decker.
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Jasper Clark Craven
Documentary Mentor & Pre-Production Associate
Jasper Craven has written for The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Harper’s, Politico and many others. He was a named finalist for the prestigious 2023 Livingston Award that honors journalists under the age of 35 for outstanding achievement in local, national and international reporting across all forms and media. His work with the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team included the multi-part series, The Shadow Campus, that exposed a poorly regulated profit-driven housing system that subjected Boston students to unsafe and even deadly conditions. It was a named finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Jasper leads the documentary program and assists with pre-production planning and researching and writing grants.