Shan Serafin

Shan Serafin
Born (1982-11-18) November 18, 1982
Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
Occupation film director, novelist
Spouse(s) Beth Serafin (2008)

Shan Serafin (born November 18, 1982) is an American writer and film director. He is noted for penning the novel Seventeen and writing and directing the psychological horror film Forest of the Living Dead (known outside the US as The Forest,) and the contained-action thriller Exile. He also directed and co-wrote the stageplay Essential Bond.

Life and career

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, as the son of two school teachers, Serafin toured the typical American education path until rounding out his studies at UCLA as a double major in math and English. His parents' pedagogical influence led him to finish college and immediately serve as a teacher in the inner city classrooms of Los Angeles, where he taught algebra and calculus.

An active Buddhist, he has devoted over 12 years to community outreach, focusing on mentoring and supporting at-risk youth.

His first novel, Seventeen, was published by Bancroft Press in 2004 as a portrait of modern adolescence as told from the vantage point of a suicidal seventeen-year-old girl named Sophia, whose plight in many senses renders this work a female version of The Catcher in the Rye. Serafin is now completing his second novel, Conquest, “an analysis of the warfare of male dating habits.”

His experience in stage and film began as an actor at UCLA, where he performed in several Shakespeare productions and various opera. He progressed to professional theater work in Santa Monica, California, performing with the Aresis Ensemble under the direction of Frederique Michel, whom he considers one of his two mentors in directing. His other mentor is, as he describes, "the combined works of Spielberg, Scorsese, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Fincher and Campion." He then began writing as an uncredited dialogue sweetener and story-developer for several American and British television programs. Further written work includes his contributions to the Soka Gakkai Buddhist publications The World Tribune and Seize the Day.

He directed and co-wrote the stage play Essential Bond about two-time Nobel Prize recipient Linus Pauling, which starred Matthew Ashford and John Astin.

He graduated from the UCLA School of Film and Television in 2011. His 2011 film, Forest of the Living Dead, formerly entitled The Forest, is a ghost story set in the high fashion world of modern Japan, filmed on location in Tokyo, Cancun and Los Angeles, through his production company 611 Films, starring Aidan Bristow and Johnny Young and features Michael Madsen.

Serafin married Beth Morrow in Los Angeles on October 26, 2008. They divorced in 2013.

Novels

Seventeen (2004)

Conquest (2014)

Filmography

Forest of the Living Dead (2011)

Exile (2012)

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