Henry Grillo will retire as interim dean of the School of Filmmaking

Henry Grillo, interim dean of the School of Filmmaking, will retire at the end of the month, Provost Patrick J. Sims has announced. Grillo has served UNCSA for 35 years as a teacher and administrator and has led the School of Filmmaking since 2019.

Sims announced that Dale Pollock, a former dean of the School of Filmmaking, will come out of retirement to serve as interim dean beginning Jan. 7, 2021. Pollock retired at the end of 2019 after 21 years of service in the film school. UNCSA expects to announce the next permanent dean in June 2021.

“While we are sorry to lose such an accomplished administrator in Henry Grillo, we are happy that he is taking this next step and wish him the best in his retirement,” Sims said. “Henry has an astonishing four decades of experience in teaching and higher education administration. As testament to his leadership, his tenure at UNCSA has been marked by firsts. He was the first to hold the title of associate dean, the first administrative fellow and the first director of the Faculty Enrichment Center.”

Since 2010, Grillo has served as associate dean of the film school, where he helped initiate new graduate programs; oversaw the design, construction and opening of the New Media Building; and provided infrastructure for a 42 percent increase in enrollment over a decade. Most recently, he served as an executive producer of the newly reimagined production of “The Nutcracker” for film.

Prior to transitioning to the film school, he taught for 25 years in the School of Design and Production, where, as assistant dean and director of graduate programs, he oversaw the growth of four M.F.A. programs to 10.

Grillo is a recipient of both the UNCSA Award for Teaching Excellence and the UNC Board of Governors Award for Teaching Excellence. He has also taught at Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Evansville (Indiana).

Professionally, he has designed scenery, lighting and sound and provided technical and production support for theater, film, television and private industry. He has an M.F.A. in theatrical production from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.A. in music theory and composition from Cornell University.

Dale Pollock previously served as dean of the School of Filmmaking at UNCSA from 1999 to 2006, when he stepped down to become an associate professor of cinema studies, teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He is a recipient of both the UNCSA Award for Teaching Excellence and the UNC Board of Governors Award for Teaching Excellence, and was the inaugural recipient of an endowed professorship established in his name in the School of Filmmaking. He also holds the titles of Distinguished Scholar and Emeritus Professor.

Pollock is responsible for establishing the RiverRun International Film Festival in Winston-Salem, and was recently recognized by the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County with an annual award for his contributions to the local arts community.

Prior to joining UNCSA, Pollock was a development executive with David Geffen’s company, president in charge of production for A&M films, and ran his own film company, Peak Productions, for 10 years. He was also co-founder and co-chair of the producing program at the American Film Institute. He began his career writing for Daily Variety and later the Los Angeles Times, where he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His writing has been published in GQ, People, Life, Rolling Stone and Esquire. Pollock is currently writing a new history of UNCSA from its founding through the present, to be published by UNC Press next year.

Sims said, “I am very lucky to have coaxed the incredibly accomplished Dale Pollock out of retirement to serve as interim dean for the remainder of the academic year, as we continue our search for the next permanent dean of the School of Filmmaking. We could not be more excited to welcome Dale home and look forward to his leadership in our nationally ranked School of Filmmaking.”

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