Josh's Story

Josh Garvin is a New York-based film director and writer. He graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2014 with a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Directing but has been involved in film production and has had a passion for film since his youth.

Born on Long Island, film has been a major part of Josh's life for as long as he can remember. His dad raised him on classic movies and instilled in him a love for Westerns. This early appreciation influenced his later graduate thesis: Stygian.

Josh got his start on the performance side of the art. He acted in a few stage plays and musicals in high school and college. He played the role of Javert in a high school production of Les Miserables, and the role of Caliban in the Tempest while in undergrad at American University in Washington D.C.

Originally considering pursuing a career in theater, Josh’s path changed when he took a basic photography class and fell head over heels with film and photography. He declared it his major and spent the next four years building a solid foundation in the art thanks to his mentors Iwan Bagus and Leena Jayaswal.

During his tenure at American, Josh went on a six month, film-focused study abroad trip to Prague in the Czech Republic. He credits this trip for setting the foundation for his film knowledge. He and his classmates at FAMU drank beer, wrote scripts, drank beer, enjoyed non-stop conversation about film, drank beer, and learned technique from crazy, albeit brilliant, Czech filmmakers. It was in the Czech Republic that he directed his first short. Upon their return to the United States, he and his team submitted their short, The Confession, to the American University SOC Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Student Film.

After graduating from American, Josh’s main focus was on photography. He worked for Zephyr Media, a company owned by a friend, shooting weddings and portraits. He crewed on film sets when he had the opportunity and in 2008-2009 spent every dime he had on his first solo project, the Door. After shooting it, he returned to New York and crewed as co-director of photography on a friend’s feature, Still, a 2nd assistant director on a professional feature length film, Violet Tendencies, and was a post-production assistant on the feature-length production Big Gay Musical.

Shortly afterwards Josh enrolled in a 6-week night film course at the New York Film Academy. For his final project there, he shot The Beach House, a short which he also starred in. NYFA was a good way to get back into making movies and build his portfolio, but Josh was looking to further both his experience and his education. He applied to several graduate programs across the country and was accepted into Columbia College Chicago, where he began his graduate education in the autumn of 2012.

Surrounded by people equally as passionate about making films as himself, mentorship and instruction from seasoned professionals, and with access to top-of-the-line equipment, he was able to thrive as a filmmaker.  In 2013 he wrote and directed Uncle Evan and in 2014 he wrote and directed his thesis film, Stygian.  He also wrote the first in a series of three feature length screenplays, The Enemy Way, a narrative that is currently being submitted to script festivals along with myriad other short scripts. In December 2014, he earned his Masters degree in Directing.

Josh then moved to Los Angeles where he joined a collective of aspiring writers workshopping their projects. He worked with a number of colleagues and shot Oakdale, 1959 in the summer of 2019. The film is, as of August 2021, making its way through a festival run. Josh moved back east in the fall of 2019 and is currently developing a pair of feature scripts as well as planning a horror short film - tentatively titled Jólakötturinn - to be shot in Iceland over Christmas 2021.