FILMMAKER’S STATEMENT

I write for the stage and for the camera—stories with music, wit, and a curatorial sense of stakes: how attention is guided, how meaning lands, how an audience exits changed.

My work as a storyteller spans film and theater, with a practice rooted in structure: timing, tone, and the disciplined arc of attention. I’m drawn to narratives that entertain without sacrificing intelligence—work that moves briskly, speaks clearly, and carries its ideas lightly enough to travel.

Because I’m also a museologist and curator, I think about storytelling the way exhibitions do: sequence, framing, and what the viewer carries from one room—or one scene—to the next. Whether the audience is seated in the dark or moving through space, I design for the same outcome: a precise experience, memorable on the surface, and quietly persuasive underneath.

My first brush with performance came early — in high school on Long Island, where I briefly studied with the legendary Jacques D’Amboise, a principal dancer of the New York City Ballet and founder of the National Dance Institute. It taught me rhythm, discipline, and the power of a body in motion — lessons that quietly shaped the way I frame a shot.

Between 1989 and 1999, I studied at the Stella Adler Conservatory and worked behind the scenes as a production assistant on independent film and theater projects in New York City. Those years trained my eye for structure, timing, and the practical choreography of making something out of nothing.

In the 1990s, I pursued film and video studies and began making short, animation, and experimental films — including Waiting for Van Gogh and an experimental animation based on Picasso’s Seated Nude Back (1902).

I’m drawn to work that lives between forms: documentary that feels intimate, experimental film with narrative pull, and stories that resist neat endings. Sometimes the “plot” matters. Sometimes the mood is the plot. Either way, the goal is always the same: a film that lingers after the screen goes dark.

Alongside my own filmmaking, I’ve spent two decades producing and interviewing artists, curators, and cultural thinkers through my video series In Conversation with… for MuseumViews (2003–present), and later as producer-interviewer for GSHA.tv (2020–2022).

I’ve learned that the most revealing part of a story is rarely the loudest — and that a good interview, like a good film, is really about listening.

THEATER MAKER’S STATEMENT

I write musical comedies with a filmmaker’s eye, a performer’s timing, and a curator’s sense of what a room is really doing. My work is drawn to the moment when a story looks familiar — and then tilts. The laughs are real, but so are the stakes. I am interested in comedy as a form of intelligence, and in music as a way of telling the truth without smoothing it over.

My relationship to performance began early, in high school on Long Island, when she briefly studied with legendary dancer and choreographer Jacques D’Amboise. It was her first education in rhythm, discipline, and presence — the kind of training you feel in your bones. New York taught me what an audience is: not a crowd, but a collective nervous system. That lesson never left.

My theater work is shaped by a lifelong engagement with film and visual culture — and by a resistance to solemnity as a substitute for substance. I am drawn to theatrical worlds where charm and menace coexist, where characters sparkle and collide, and where the “fun” parts are doing serious work underneath. In other words: I write musicals for people who like their comedy with teeth.

CURRENT WORK

Moments in Spring (dark musical comedy)

A dreamscape musical comedy about antisemitism and allyship — a story that unfolds like a puzzle you actively seek to solve, with music as both illumination and misdirection.

Poppy Fields (period musical comedy)

A musical comedy set in a grand British country house in the summer of 1929 — when manners were strict, champagne was cold, and everyone was hiding something.

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STEELY EYED SAMURAI (IMDb), A Short Film by HOMA TAJ (IMDb)

FEATURE FILMS

Writer, Director, Co-Producer

The Dealer (feature film, development) – Homa is in the process of adapting the script for The Dealer as a stage play. Rene (feature film, treatment) is about a magical encounter between a young aspiring dancer and August Rodin.

SHORT | ANIMATION | EXPERIMENTAL FILMS

Writer, Director, Producer:

Steely Eyed Samurai (short film), 2015

Maria’s Comet (short film), 2014

Nantucket Atheneum (short film), 2013

Seated Nude Back (Animation, 1998)

Jennifer Ricci: Portrait of a Poet, Video Documentary, 1999

Waiting for Van Gogh, Video Documentary, 1999

Experimental Animation (16mm), 1999

OTHERS

Producer, Interviewer Video Series: In Conversation with… (Creatives) for MUSEUMVIEWS,  2003-present

Producer-Interviewer Video Series for GSHAtv at GSHA (Global Sports Heritage Foundation), May-2020-2022