The Zaki Gordon Institute of Independent Filmmaking is losing two of its most prominent staffers.

Founding Director Stephan Schultze and his wife, Lori Schultze, the school’s former public relations and marketing manager, are moving to Lynchburg, Va. Liberty University recently hired Stephan Schultze to build a film school in the same manner he turned Zaki Gordon from a fledgling program into a fixture of Sedona’s film community.

Stephan Schultze has been the head of the school for the last 11 years, and was its first instructor.

Schultze moved to Los Angeles as a screenwriter in 1989. He worked on the films “The Abyss” and “Tremors” and was the director of cinematography on eight others, including “The Lesser Evil,” which he also wrote and coproduced in 1998 and “Last Chance,” directed by Bryan Cranston.

In 2000, Zaki Gordon’s founder Dan Gordon was looking to start a film school through Yavapai College. He hired Schultze to serve as the founding director.

“I thought this would be a great fit for me,” Schultze said. “I figured I’d be here a year, or two years. But we fell in love with the community, and now it’s been 11 years.”

Schultze said he left Los Angeles because of the hectic schedule but found himself working more as the head instructor and administrator of the school. Resources were sparse, so often Schultze was running a camera from one film shoot to the next on top of teaching every class.

While Yavapai College hiring committee searched for teachers, Schultze was the only instructor with about 15 or 16 primarily local students. Instructor Bryan Reinhart wasn’t hired until about two months after classes started.

“We had our first film festival that next Memorial Day [in 2001],” Schultze said. “It was something amazing and special.”

As director, Schultze taught screenwriting classes and filled in the gaps when there were no other instructors available over the years. He also reviewed the raw footage shot by students.

“It rekindled my passion,” he said. “To see new filmmakers make their first film, watch it with them at the festival with a live audience.”

Yavapai College has been “very supportive” of Zaki Gordon and the city of Sedona has embraced the school and the students.

“It’s been one of the most richly rewarding experiences of my life,” he said.

Schultze also served on the board of the Sedona International Film Festival for six years, first joining as it began to break away from the Sedona Cultural Park. He helped hire Executive Director Patrick Schweiss and helped foster a partnership between the festival and school during his last four years on the board.

SIFF used to offer blocks of Zaki Gordon student films during its annual festival. As the overall caliber of students’ work improved, students rose to a level where they compete to get in just like other filmmakers. Schultze said this gives the students another taste of the real-world film industry and better prepares them for the business after graduation.

Students from 30 countries and as many states have enrolled, giving the school an international flavor at times, he said.

Schultze has watched Sedona transform into a film community over the last decade. Residents have become big supporters of SIFF and the Second Tuesday Cinema Series as well as Zaki Gordon and appreciate the high-quality films brought here as well as what can be shot here.

Schultze is most proud of the students who have come through the school and “moved onto other parts of filmmaking and other parts of life. They make connections and friends and learn to work in groups, to be a part of that cooperative spirit.”

He said at one student festival, a mother of one student said, “‘You gave me back my son.’ I said, ‘What to you mean?’ She said he used to be quiet, uncooperative, he wouldn’t talk.”

The experience at Zaki taught him how to work with others and opened him up, Schultze said.

“That is the kind of stuff that I will take with me for a lifetime,” he said.

The style of the school has also helped students work in small crews of four to 10 filmmakers, giving them the training needed so they can easily transition to work on big studio projects or simply make films with small crews wherever they happen to go after graduation.

Like many Zaki Gordon students, Lori Schultze began at the school as an actress in the student films. After acting in 2000, she later joined the school program as a student.

“I thought filmmaking would be a new process for me,” she said. “I thought it would be fun to help develop the student film festival.”

She was hired on as staff in 2003 and was eventually promoted to head up public relations and marketing, mainly focusing on the school’s annual student film festival on Memorial Day weekend. She and Stephan married in 2005.

Lori Schultze said she will miss Sedona and Zaki Gordon.

“It was such a big part of our lives,” she said. “I’m hoping that people in Sedona take a chance to get closer to the filmmaking process because it was such a great opportunity. I know it was for me.”

She said she loved “getting to know the students, getting to know the filmmakers and watching them grow as people.”

“For me the film festival was always the highlight because you could see the growth that they had gone over in a year,” she said. “It was a real special time — to see them face their audience for the first time, to take feedback from the audience and ingest it. That was the highlight for me.”

She aimed to make the festival a more professional endeavor so students who were able to get their films into major film festivals, like those in Vancouver, Canada, and Tel Aviv, Israel, wouldn’t be “a deer in the headlights.”

While Stephan Schultze begins teaching at Liberty University, Lori Schultze plans to take care of their 2-year-old son, Christopher. However, she and her husband have more films in the works.

“His first love is writing, so he’s got some screenplays, and we’d like to do some indie films together,” Lori Schultze said.

She said she hopes the school continues to build on what they were able to accomplish.

“Stephan was the spirit behind the school for a such a long time,” she said. “People who work there really have the same spirit and want to give everything they have to give the students experience for when they go out on their own.”

Through Yavapai College and under the Schultzes’ leadership, the school developed a partnership with Northern Arizona University allowing NAU students to minor in film at Zaki as well as allowing Zaki students to transfer their credits to NAU.

Stephan Schultze said he plans to build Liberty’s program on Zaki Gordon’s model and to further the partnership between the two schools possibly with collaborative projects or student transfers.

Even though they’re leaving, the Schultzes plan on visiting Sedona for the future Zaki Gordon film festivals, and Stephan Schultze is scheduled to teach a class here in October.

Yavapai College has yet to name replacements. Classes at Zaki Gordon began Monday, Aug. 22.