Carl Haber – Director of Studies, Professor of Directing and Screenwriting
After earning a degree in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a grad degree from the London International Film School, Haber moved to New York City, where he worked as a PA, then associate producer for Maysles Films. In New York from 1979 through 1988, Haber directed three shorts, an Off-Broadway musical, wrote a number of screenplays, was the Associate Producer of an independent feature, produced several documentaries, dozens of TV commercials and music videos, as well as films for international TV networks, and wrote and produced a film for PBS Wonderworks series; in 1988 he became a member of the Writers Guild of America.
That year he also moved to Rome, where he lived and worked for ten years, during which he wrote spec scripts and scripts on commission (including with Fellini’s writer Bernardino Zapponi), directed TV films, comedies and pilot shows, founded a professional actors’ workshop and was invited as a guest on numerous film festival juries. In ’96 Haber wrote, produced and directed “L’amico di Wang”, a feature comedy distributed theatrically by Lucky Red; in ’97 he directed two prime time documentaries for the “Mixer” series on RAI-TV.
From ’98 to ’04 Carl lived and worked in Santa Monica, CA. He sold an original thriller script to Lion’s Gate, produced shows and reports for Italian, Austrian and Australian TV networks; he also produced and directed two documentaries, and directed a play at the Century City Playhouse in West LA.
In Bucharest, in 2004 he helped launch Kentauros Studios, then produced for Swipe Studios, until being invited to run the program at the Prague Film School in the Czech Republic. From 2005 through 2008 he taught courses in direction, production and acting, and served as Faculty Chair and Academic Coordinator, supervising students from over 35 countries on over 1,000 student films. In ‘08 Haber wrote, directed and produced “The Wrong Mr. Johnson”, a romantic comedy that gained a huge public following in the Czech Republic.; it was released globally, featured in many festivals and runs frequently on the nation’s number one commercial network TV-Nova.
After teaching at Philadelphia universities – University of Pennsylvania, University of the Arts and Drexel University – from ’10-’13, he moved back to Italy, and he taught courses and even served as acting chair of the film department at the American University of Rome. In 2016 he was a visiting professor of Film and TV at SCAD in Savannah Georgia, before returning to Rome to launch RIFS in the fall of that year.
Currently Mr. Haber is developing a number of exciting new projects he has written, together with producer David Levy, for films based in both the US and Europe, as well as helping develop feature projects of talented former students. Additionally he he has created a consortium with several other top tier European film programs, to launch a series of initiatives: a large online portal offering high quality student films on demand, as well as collaborative feature productions written and produced by students from our schools.
