Daniel Alegi
My name is Danny Alegi, I am an educator, a filmmaker, a storyteller, and an innovator.
As an educator, I have taught film courses at colleges, universities and film schools in the U.S. and Europe. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM-Film) I began as a Graduate TA leading undergraduate Media 101 filmmaking sections. Once in L.A., at the College of the Canyons in Valencia, California I taught practice-based courses in screenwriting and 16mm cinematography.
When I was recruited by Karlstad University to lead their first graduate film production in Scandinavia, I jumped at the chance, returned twice, was hired and moved with my young family. My task? To develop a radically new theory-practice curriculum at both undergrad and graduate levels. The “Praxis” program I co-designed was grounded in theory but graded for hands-on film practice in editing, short documentary and animation. Most of the cinematic stories made by my students are personal. No directing chairs, no casting couches, no roleplaying. My focus is on inspiring the use of basic story structures that with practice liberate and enhance each student’s experiments in narrative courage, discovery and reveals into what matters most: humans and their relationship with an Other.
Not a surprise that, with full support, my Swedish educational journey (although with some commuting) got extended for years . My short book A Cinemahead in Värmland: (why I left Hollywood and landed in the Swedish Forest) plays out possible what-if scenarios.
I am the founder of Cinemahead, a film development lab and story consultancy which offers institutions and organizations a set of custom seminars, development workshops. and practical e-publications such as “Startup Your Story” and “DocMob Manifesto“. Cinemahead contributes its workshop method to the Nordic Youth Film Festival (NUFF) in Norway and to NUFF Global, a worldwide youth competition addressing critical sustainability issues with short films. In Cape Town, South Africa I lead workshops for documentary storytellers and I have mentored young filmmakers from Gaza. For the Swedish Film Institute, I led online scriptwriting programs and Film i Värmland, a cultural hub, sponsored my weekly film directing workshop to help jump start local film industry growth. Mission accomplished. I have also held a parallel long term teaching positions at the Molkom Film School. Students such as Sara Broos, Daniel Wirtberg and Jonas Bergergård are now more recognized industry film voices than I ever was.
I am a film teacher because I had amazing teachers. As an assistant to director Gianni Zanasi (Nella Mischia, Cannes Festival 1995) and as a writing mentee with Martin Donovan (author of Death Becomes Her). I often tell my students about briefly working with Dario Fo and Franca Rame on their 1986 first US Yale Drama tour. Learning how to tell a story to strangers will change your life. I was also part of an incredible MFA cohort that collectively won major awards, including Sundance Fest (1997, American Movie) and my own Czar of Make Believe (2000) with extraordinary help from Kirill Mikhanovsky and a cameo by then unknown Mark Borchardt. This minor-key tale of an immigrant lost in the mid-west sparked extended Q&As among festival audiences. My first Cinemahead workshop came out of improvised backstage feedback at the Siena Film Fest in Italy.
I am invited to hold seminars for schools and keynotes for organizations. I enjoy speaking because story as a framework makes people curious, engaged and inspired. I enjoyed public speaking in Sweden at Göteborg’s film festival and for creative writers in Stockholm and Denmark at Aarhus Uni.and and at the unforgettable Luton Filmstock festival in the UK. The hilltop yearly art exhibit Hotel Pupik (Austria) is an out-of-time campground event! At the Marquette Museum in Milwaukee,WI and the Italian Cultural Center in L.A. I discovered just how fascinated people are with the personal journey of making low-budget solo filmwork. I participated in co-founding the Youth Cinema Network, in partnership with Station Next and NUFF (Norway), an active and vibrant EU platform tasked with supporting young multi-cultural film projects.
In 2016, I saw another opportunity: the growth of storytelling as a new educational space with vast potential. At the time few Universities considered storytelling a proper subject because of its highly interdisciplinary and somewhat informal nature. I took the chance . I paused my formal academic teaching to research, and enter, the innovation space where vision and story, cinematic or not, are the currency of future leadership. For the past few years, then, while my film workshops continue, I have as students startup companies in the sustainable innovation sector in Scandinavia. Cinemahead provides narrative structure and strategy to orgs needing to master the power of story from framework, to language, to process. Many of them now even produce their own documentaries and ads. I have mentored The Great Journey Game Co., Future Games, Karlstad Innovation Park, Allgreen, MOVZ, Igitego, Sound Dimension, and in Italy the art platform Artitude.
I continue to run screenwriting workshops in San Francisco with the Sanford Meisner Institute. Over the years, I’ve collaborated with numerous film productions and scripts. Recently, in Rome with Lupin Films, co-producers of The Hand of God and the Award winning Italian filmmaking pair “Latilla Brothers”.
I have been lucky to curate short film screenings at the Pompidou Museum in Paris with Polyphonix Nomad Lab.
I am a pro English–Italian subtitle translator. I currently volunteer on TED’s Italian translation team. In the past I subtitled for Italy entire seasons of The Simpsons, South Park and Friends along with many features. My graduate-level workshop “The Global Lingo of Subtitles” was been hosted at Università di Pisa and atUniversità Gabriele D’Annunzio in Pescara, both in Italy.
AuthorHouse (Indiana, USA) is releasing my next educational book “What makes a story different?” in 2025