A short about Emily Dickenson has won a prestigious Telly Award—and Columbus College of Art & Design filmmakers helped make it happen. Film & Video Assistant Professor and Chair Kingsley Lims Nyarko assembled a group of CCAD students and others to tell the story of renowned poet Emily Dickenson with the short film Showdown in Amherst, which recently landed a silver Telly for in the category Narrative & Scripted—Non-Broadcast. The prestigious awards, introduced 1979, recognize the best in television and video; Showdown in Amherst was selected for the honor from a field of 12,000 entries from all 50 states and six continents. (In addition to the Telly awards, Showdown in Amherst was a quarter-finalist in the Sunvale Screenplay Contest earlier in the year.)
CCAD Film & Video faculty, students, and alumni helped produce Showdown in Amherst, which won a silver Telly award in the category Narrative & Scripted—Non-Broadcast.
Amy Drake, the Columbus-area playwright, producer, speaker, and actor who wrote the initial script for the short, reached out to Nyarko to discuss collaborating on the work. Nyarko told The Columbus Dispatch he was intrigued by the concept and thought it would make a great story. Together, he and Drake assembled an all-Ohio cast and crew that included Nyarko as director and cinematographer and Tiana Coreus (Film & Video, 2023) as the screenplay’s writer. Other CCAD community members with roles in the production included Graphics/Editor Jiyoung Kim (Film & Video, 2023), Co-Producer Chelsea Inboden (Photography, 2024), Line Producer Patrick Thibodeaux (Film & Video, 2025), Assistant Camera Dakota Smith (Film & Video, 2024), Boom Operator Jannerickson Valiente (Film & Video, 2026), and Film & Video adjuncts Cristyn Allen-Steward (as producer) and Nicolette Swift (as sound designer).
Film & Video students gain skills and grow portfolios through real-world collaboration
Projects such as Showdown in Amherst provide students with an invaluable opportunity to put their classroom learning into practice, sharpen their professional skills, build their networks, and learn more about roles in their chosen industry. (And, of course, winning a prestigious award like a Telly doesn’t hurt, either.)
Whenever we get projects like this, one of my goals for the department as chair is to encourage students to go outside of CCAD to do more. They’re learning and getting the skills. The collaboration between professionals, faculty and students—it’s the right group of people for the students to learn from,” Film & Video Assistant Professor and Chair Kingsley Lims Nyarko told The Columbus Dispatch.
Nyarko’s sentiment is echoed by the students. As line producer with the production, Thibodeaux worked to organize the scheduling in order for the production to run smoothly. “I learned that I really liked being a producer,” he says. “Guiding people through the day is something that, as a huge introvert, I never would have thought I'd enjoy.”
The experience “was really valuable,” says Patrick Thibodeaux (Film & Video, 2025). “It expanded my horizons with what I'm capable of doing for a production, and helped reaffirm my knowledge of how a set works.”
Valiente says filming Showdown in Amherst was one of his first times working on a set. He says the project has been a resume-booster and the experience of being on-set already has helped him while working on sets in his hometown of Atlanta. With Showdown in Amherst, “I learned a lot about the filmmaking process and the amount of moving pieces it takes to do a production,” he says.
More about Showdown in Amherst
Showdown in Amherst, which made its debut in February 2024 at CCAD, was filmed at Thurber House, one of CCAD’s neighbors in downtown Columbus’ Discovery District. The building, built in 1873, has a very similar look and feel to Dickenson’s home in Amherst, Mass, where the film short takes place. The plot follows a visit to Dickenson by her literary mentor Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and what happens when Wentworth “dismisses her work as anything but ‘real poetry,’” according to a press release for the film. “Their clash of perspectives sets the stage for a powerful showdown—one that reverberates through time.” For more coverage on the project—including the story of why a ghost is acknowledged in the film’s credits—read coverage from Columbus media outlet NBC4.
Header image: Film & Video Chair Kingsley Lims Nyarko on the set of Telly award-winning Showdown in Amherst, a short film about Emily Dickenson.
Learn more about the Film & Video program at CCAD or apply here.
