Our Team
Mika Johnson, Neal Dhand and Kat Clauhs Dhand (pictured with Petra at Wandering Cinema 2023) are friends who met in 2017 when Neal and Mika were teaching together at Prague Film School.
One day years ago we got to talking about what really makes us feel alive and inspired, what is something we could make happen? And we had this idea to hole up in the beautiful countryside somewhere with a group of like-minded folks and dive deep into collaborative creativity together. Our dream finally came true in the Summer of 2022 when we hosted the first Wandering Cinema Film Retreat in Italy.
Kat owns, with her sister, a successful boutique travel business and is an expert at planning logistics and she will make sure everyone is comfortable, well fed and having a great time!
About Neal and Mika
Mika and Neal are both well-respected and passionate university-level film educators, and resourceful, persistent, and ultimately successful and inspired independent filmmakers. They share a combined total of over 30 years experience teaching and living film, and while their interests and areas of expertise occasionally overlap they have built their careers in completely different ways and bring to the table very divergent interests and skill sets.
Mika Johnson
I am a multimedia artist and filmmaker based in Prague, originally from Ohio.
My early work focused on experimental shorts before transitioning into hybrid styles blending documentary and fiction. My largest project, The Amerikans, is a series of 15 short documentaries featuring people from my home region in Ohio. The project’s success brought me to Prague in 2014 to teach at the Prague Film School. I have since taught at FAMU, AAU, and Prague City University, where I currently lead a course on cross-platform storytelling.
During my early years in Prague, I created my first feature film, Confessions of a Box Man—an experimental homage to Kobo Abe’s The Box Man and the editing style of Dušan Makavejev. I also directed music videos, including a commission for Matthew Herbert’s This is (Not) Beethoven - Adagietto. At present, I am working with Neal and Kat, in post, on a second feature that Neal and I co-directed, and Kat produced.
Since 2018, my main work has been creating immersive, traveling installations which combine mediums like VR, interactive audio, projections, and apps. These include VRwandlung, a VR adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, The Infinite Library, and The Republic of Dreams. These works explore dream-like narratives, mythology, ritual, AI, and biodiversity.
My films and installations have been featured in over 50 countries, earning awards like Best Feature Film Director at the Eastern Nigeria International Film Festival (2020), Best Experimental Short at Reel 13 (2016), and Best Medium-Length Film at the Mirror Mountain Festival (2015).
My current passion project, Theta Noir, is a visionary collective crafting AI rituals to challenge mainstream narratives about technology. It also allows me the opportunity to sing and play guitar.
In my free time, I enjoy spending time with my partner and dog at our Czech countryside cottage, where I love to read, watch films, and drink beer.
Neal Dhand
I'm a writer, director, producer, and teacher from Philadelphia. I make films that fall between genre and arthouse.
My film DARK MY LIGHT, a revisionist sci-fi drama and thriller for the modern age, premiered at Fantaspoa in April 2024 and is currently on the festival circuit. In 2023 I wrote, co-directed (with Mika!), produced (with Kat!), and starred in the feature film GENOA. Shot in the city of the same name, the film is a surrealist take on fatherhood and family. It's also spurred on a new wave of filmmaking for me, something I'm calling "dad-genre" - dad's in trouble in films with a genre edge.
A new project LIFE, REVISITED, was selected to the Torino Film Lab’s “Next” edition in 2024 and is now in development. My screenplays have placed in a variety of competitions, including the Nicholl Fellowship, Slamdance, American Zoetrope, and Austin.
I've taught screenwriting, directing, producing, and film analysis at universities in Pennsylvania, New York, and the Czech Republic. Alongside co-founding Wandering Cinema, I'm also a mentor at the M2 Film Lab in Istanbul, Turkey.
I love teaching like I love filmmaking. I’m an Assistant Professor of Directing at Temple University, and prior to that I taught at Prague Film School. My main areas of focus are blocking techniques and working with actors... I love film history and cinema studies, too, and I hold out hope that all of my students will become as obsessed with HAPPY AS LAZZARO as I am.
Alongside my film work, I'm a father, runner, scotch enthusiast, music lover with no talent for music, and baseball fan. Whether doing some or none of these, I like to spend time with Kat, our kids Petra and Nihal, and our dog Ike.Neal was photographed in his true form at Wandering Cinema 2022 by Hannah Pitstick.
