MISSION

Our mission is to fill a hole in the short film space, equipping writers to elevate their skills to craft a contained short that they themselves may be able to produce, while hitting all the emotional and structural beats award winning shorts need to hit. 

Secondly, to create opportunity and encourage underrepresented and emerging screenwriters in the Hudson Valley (and greater NY) to produce their own work and foster community in this time of contraction. Having a polished, ready-to-shoot, professional, contained script——at any level——can elevate a screenwriter’s career.

MEET THE TEAM

MEET THE TEAM

A woman with gray curly hair wearing sunglasses, a patterned scarf, and a white sleeveless top, posed outdoors against a wooden background.

AC Cole

AC Cole is a screenwriter/teacher living in the Hudson Valley, whose screenplays have won accolades like the Screencraft Fellowship, a NYFA grant, Nicholl placement, and were finalists in the NBCU and Athena/AMC TV writing fellowships—harder to get into than Harvard. As well as being a member of the WGAE, AC was Volunteer Coordinator for two seasons at the Woodstock Film Festival. Teaching screen craft led to the idea for a local upstate screenwriting lab where little to no opportunities for emerging/underrepresented screenwriters exist. Partnering with Stockade Works as fiscal sponsor/crew support, and Spark of Hudson for venue support and non-profit guidance, AC is obsessed with filling a hole in the market, giving emerging writers skills to craft legitimate contained short films.

Tiffany Kelley - A woman with long dark hair, glasses, red lipstick, and a nose piercing, wearing a black top with lace detail, is sitting against a plain white or light-colored wall.

Tiffany Kelley

Tiffany Kelley is a producer of film and events across arts and corporate spaces. For fifteen years, she produced TV and radio, primarily in advertising and branding. This overlapped with creating a small boutique production company of her own called Scarlett and Harlot, which focused on producing TV and radio storyboards, while casting of advertising spots for big name clients. For the last four years, Tiffany has found herself working at GoPro producing photography shoots for branding to elevate GoPro’s integration into film and TV. Tiffany co-produced Volunteer Coordination at the Woodstock Film Festival for two seasons and is now co-producer of the Screenwriting Sprint Lab.

Jack Warren - Close-up of a person with long brown hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, wearing a light blue collared shirt against a neutral background.

Jack Warren

Jack Warren is a writer, filmmaker, and programmer hailing from Phoenicia, NY. Their award winning shorts have screened at dozens of film festivals around the world including Fantasia, Final Girls Berlin, the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, and the Woodstock Film Festival. Jack’s upcoming feature film, VIOLENT DELIGHTS, has been selected to pitch at the Cannes Film Festival's Frontiéres Co-Production Market, the world’s leading genre film showcase. Jack has helped program the best in sci-fi and horror to the ALTER and DUST channels across YouTube, Roku, and Tubi, as well as screening Hudson Valley films and filmmakers at the Cellar Door Cinema Club and Art Port Kingston.

MUTAURWA MAPONDERA - A man with a beard and dark skin wearing a black New York Yankees baseball cap and a multicolored tie-dye shirt, standing outdoors near a metal fence with green trees in the background.

Mutaurwa Mapondera

Mutaurwa Mapondera is a Zimbabwean-American writer, director, and photographer based in Brooklyn, New York, who has written and produced award-winning work in advertising, documentary film, and photography. Rumble, his Post Apocalyptic Western feature was a semifinalist in the 2024 Nicholl Fellowship and co-winner of the very last 2025 Screencraft Screenwriting Fellowship. Mutaurwa just dove in to directing his first contained short, DEALBREAKER, in 2026, a relationship drama that explores a nuanced and harsh emotional rollercoaster of urban love with a tragic twist.

MAYA ROCK - A woman with curly blonde hair and blue eyes smiling in front of a gray wall, holding a paper in her left hand.

MAYA ROCK

Maya Rock is a Lebanese-German-Jamaican-American actor whose love of cinema and stage reaches from the Catskills Theatrical Community to independent productions in the Hudson Valley. Maya is an associate manager at the Catskill Mountain Foundation theater, is an actor for the Maude Adams Theatre Co. and Colombia County Players, has worked in PR/Press for the Woodstock Film Festival, and is a writer in her spare time. Maya is super pumped to spend the summer with the Screenwriting Sprint's Contained Shorts Lab where she will be in charge of the table-read series for finalists.