Sex and power games go hand in hand in Welcome to Academia, a dark satire that uses the university as a metaphor for personal and professional relationships.

 

An idealistic graduate student of modern history on her journey to obtain a well-deserved diploma learns the hard way that merit and intellect are not the most important values in the corrupt and indifferent environment that she has faith in. The subject of her doctoral thesis, “Aftermath: Yalta, the 20th Century, and Beyond,” symbolizes the power structures of her own reality—her doctoral committee, known as the Hydra, represents the three World War Two superpowers: the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union.

 

To make matters worse, her charming but oblivious thesis advisor abandons her amidst the swirl of departmental politics. Who’ll be the new Dean? Will the new President ruin the  curriculum and get rid of tenure? And what will happen to our young, innocent student of modern history who has to pay a high price in order to get her well-deserved diploma? Will the 'rite of passage' that she has to go through make her end up like her oppressed oppressors?

 

Elzbieta Szoka (Executive Producer and Screenwriter) was born and raised in Lodz, Poland. She received her M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Warsaw in Poland and a Ph.D. in Brazilian Literature and Culture from the University of Texas in Austin. After a 20-year stint in academia as a literary and theater scholar, she became involved in filmmaking as executive producer and script advisor on the movie Screen Door Jesus. She co-wrote the screenplay for the film Welcome to Academia with Kirk Davis a few years later and is currently developing new projects with Sam Adelman for Paradox Smoke Productions. She is also a translator and editor for Host Publications, an international literary press which she co-founded with her husband Joe W. Bratcher III in 1988. Elzbieta lives in NYC with her husband and their two sons, Adam and Ian.

 

Sam Adelman (Producer) has worked in the editing rooms of over 50 feature films with such luminary directors as Sidney Lumet, Andrew Bergman, Ulu Grosbard, Robert Redford, Frank Gilroy, and Nora Ephron. He is the founder of ST, a script development workshop that ran for 5 years in  various New York locations, hosting over 100 readings with moderated critiques afterward. Since 2002 he has been a Producer of two feature films, Screen Door Jesus and Welcome to Academia, as well as the Academy Award-nominated short documentary film Salim Baba.

 

Kirk Davis (Director, co-screenwriter) was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He studied filmmaking at Columbia University, receiving an MFA. He was a founding writer/performer of the groundbreaking comedy group Tunnelvision which performed at Stand Up NY, Gotham and Caroline's Comedy Club. He wrote and directed several short films and the feature film Screen Door Jesus which won numerous festival awards including Best Film, Best Cinematography, and Best Score at the 2003 Hamptons International Film Festival.