Bradley Battersby is an American film director and screenwriter. He is the chair of the Film Department at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. He was named "Mentor of the Year" by Variety magazine in 2017. When designing Ringling’s film program curriculum, Battersby, who’s sold projects to HBO and Universal, implemented an experimental hands-on approach, something he endorsed at the other film schools at which he’s taught, including AFI, Chapman U. and the Maine Workshops, where in 2001 he created a pre-professional film program for high school students at the Idyllwild Arts Academy. He says, “I am never very far from my 18-year-old self and what I wanted in film school way back when,” says Battersby. “And I really wanted Sydney Pollack, for example, to get up with a room of actors and actually stage a scene. I wanted to see Peter Weir put his music to his movies. I wanted to get everyone in the move and in the groove.” To this end, with the support of Ringling’s president, Larry Thompson, Battersby and David Shapiro of Semkhor Productions launched the Ringling College Studio Lab program, in which entertainment professionals would visit campus and engage in conversation and filmmaking exercises with students. First guest: Werner Herzog.