User:Ethiopianfilmbuff/Yemane Demissie

Yemane Demissie is an Ethiopian film director, writer, and producer, who is based in New York City. He received his MFA in film directing from the UCLA School of Theatre, Film & Television and his B.S. and B.A. from Moorhead State University.

He teaches film, television and documentary production, writing and cinema studies classes at New York University’s Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film & Television. Prior to his recent move to New York, Yemane taught writing, directing and producing classes at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and UCLA Extension.

Yemane has received numerous national and international grants and fellowships for his work including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Locarno Film Festival Production Grant, the AFI Filmmaker's Grant, the Fonds Sud Writing Grant, and the California Arts Council Artists Fellowship.

Yemane recently completed Dead Weight, a feature film that he directed, edited, and produced. He also produced and directed a one-hour documentary on Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie for a seven-part series entitled Great Africans. The series is produced by MNET, a South African broadcaster that airs programming in numerous African countries. His first feature, Tumult screened at over forty international film festivals including London, Hamptons, Rotterdam, AFI, FESPACO, Seattle, Midnight Sun, Milan, and Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festivals and was released theatrically in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany. Tumult was a Best Picture nominee at M-NET’s All Africa Film Awards and a First Place winner at NBPC’s (PBS) Prized Pieces Film & Video Competition.