James Janowsky

James Janowsky is a writer and educator.

He is currently working on several screenplays, a T.V. pilot, and an eight issue comic book miniseries, “A.O.A.: Angle of Attack,” that will be released in 2018. Another T.V. pilot that he co-wrote, “The Hunt,” was a recent featured script on The Black List, a Table Read My Screenplay semi-finalist, a ScreenCraft Pilot Launch semi-finalist, and a Big Break quarter-finalist.

He taught screenwriting and film business at New York’s School of Visual Arts for six years. He has participated in film and writing seminars at the Independent Filmmaker Project, Film Interchange and the South Asian International Film Festival. In 2013 and 2014 he was selected to be a judge for the Student Academy Awards.

He has been hired by Fox, Fox Searchlight and Warner Bros. to moderate Q&A’s with Hollywood talent for such films as “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “The Prisoner,” “Trance” and “How to Train Your Dragon 2.” Since 2005 he has moderated over 200 Q&A’s and he is hired yearly to teach moderating to SVA students for their After School Special Film Festival.

From 2001-2012 he was a part of the NBRMP, a screening member for four years and their Creative Director and Student Grant Committee Chair for seven. While working there, he established the student grants at NYU, Ringling College of Art and Design, the Ghetto Film School, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, and Educational Video Center.

In 2012 he established the James Richard Janowsky Awards to honor talented film students. Since then, over 50 students at Columbia University, New York University and School of Visual Arts have received the JRJ Award. In 2017 two of the awardees won Student Academy Awards.

He is currently a member of the Independent Filmmaker Project, New York Women in Film and Television, and a voter for the Independent Spirit Awards. In 2000 he received his M.F.A. from the Columbia University Film Program with a concentration in screenwriting.