University Calendar

We will be screening SURVIVING ME: THE 9 CIRCLES OF SOPHIE.

Leah Yananton is a filmmaker, writer, actor, and performance artist based in Los Angeles. Yananton appeared regularly at The Groundlings Theatre in the Catmilk Show under the direction of founder Gary Austin. She is a member of Rob Watzke’s SHPLOTZ! improvisational theater company, with weekly performances featuring special guests such as Helen Slater, Helen Hunt, and Jason Alexander.

Yananton’s professional film experience began in the camera department on Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and Marc Levin’s & Mark Benjamin's Brooklyn Babylon. She went on to travel the globe working on documentaries for HBO, National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel. 

She received her B.F.A. from Columbia University where she received the Stephen Ades award for Creative Writing as well as a scholarship from the Ministry of Education of Taiwan, to study Mandarin Chinese. While studying in Taipei, she wrote and directed her first bilingual short film Baozhi / The Newspaper. Returning to New York, Yananton co-wrote and directed “The Naked Show,” the full-length off-off Broadway political satire about college activism and mainstream media in the wake of 9-11 and the start of the Iraq War.

She studied directing under Columbia School of the Arts dramaturgy professor Lenore DeKoven as part of Our Workshop East. After completing the two-year Meisner acting conservatory program under James Brill at The Neighborhood Playhouse, Yananton wrote, directed and acted in the surreal short film, THE BURIAL (15 min) an Official Selection at the L.A. Shorts Fest, and appeared in Steven Spielberg’s WAR OF THE WORLDS.

Yananton was commissioned to direct the documentary MANHATTANVILLE: A NEIGHBORHOOD UNDER SIEGE (32 min) which chronicled Columbia University’s controversial expansion into her West Harlem neighborhood. MANHATTANVILLE screened at the Harlem Film Festival, Girl Fest Hawaii, and L.A. Shorts Fest, and continues to be screened by the Columbia community and West Harlem neighborhood to facilitate dialogue.

Yananton performed LANDESCAPES, a performance art video installation commissioned by the cWOW Gallery in Newark. Leah is also developing an environmental justice documentary IN OUR BACKYARD, about the municipal polluting of an African American community in Athens, GA. Her next narrative feature deals with the problem of commercial exploitation of sexuality among the LGBTQ community in West Hollywood, and is currently in development.