SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

July 24-August 9 | 866-558-4253

Directors' Bios

Index:

Matthew Asner, 100 Voices: A Journey Home

After a short but brilliant acting career playing parts such as Stringbean in the classic, “Neon Maniacs” and five years of fronting the popular post punk bands Insect Idol and Grand Manner, Matthew decided that his true place was behind the camera. Since making that decision, Matthew’s credits include creating and producing the groundbreaking Showtime mini-series, “Hiroshima.” Matthew teamed with director Roger Spottiswoode in creating the film’s unique look, blending original and archival footage. He spent years researching and writing the film’s scene-by-scene treatment. He also directed the North American video unit, and worked closely with the Japanese filmmakers during the shoot in Japan. He spent one year in Montreal as the film’s sole American producer in Canada. “Hiroshima” won many awards, including The Humanitas Prize. Matthew also consulted on the Showtime movies, The Life And Times Of Joe Bonnano” (produced in Canada) and “Promises to Keep.”

 

He has interviewed some of the biggest newsmakers of our time including President Bill Clinton, Scientist Edward Teller and Israeli Prime Ministers Netanyahu and Barak and Palestinian dignitary Saib Erakat. 

 

Matthew’s documentary work includes producing the acclaimed feature documentaries for Moriah Films, “In Search Of Peace (Part One), “ the follow-up to the 2000 Academy Award winner for Best Documentary, “The Long Way Home, “ and “Unlikely Heroes.” He spent three years at Moriah as an in house producer working on documentary projects before joining his lifelong friend, Danny Gold, in forming Mod 3 productions.

 

Matthew and Danny have produced written and directed numerous projects for studios and networks such as the History Channel, MTV, Dreamworks, Miramax, Warner Bros and Fox. 

Their most current projects include “Alpha Company,” A thirteen part series about 12 soldiers and their experiences together in training and through their deployment to Iraq; and “Season Of The Samurai,”  a documentary comedy about an all-Japanese baseball team playing in the American minor Leagues for an entire season. It was an official selection to the Santa Barbara Film Festival and the opening film at the Just For Laughs Festival.

 

 

 

German Berger-Hertz, My Life with Carlos

Germán Berger Hertz was born in Santiago, Chile in 1972. He obtained a Bachelors Degree in Journalism at Diego Portales University and a degree in Art and Aesthetics at the Catholic University of Chile. He started working as a journalist in two Chilean TV Stations (TVN and Channel 2) and produced a series of short documentaries, “Hincha pelotas” and “Eros” amongst the most relevant ones. In 1997 he moved to Barcelona, where he currently resides. There he studied Cinematography at CECC (majoring in Direction and Editing) and pursued a Masters Degree in Documentary of Creation at Pompeu Fabra University. His first work was “Esmorzar,” a short fiction film in super 8 mm, selected at the Sitges Film Festival. He subsequently directed “Todo lo sólido,” a mid-length documentary in 35 mm selected in more than 20 International Festivals. It won the Best Soundtrack Award at the Sitges International Film Festival and was produced by Grup Cinema Art. He directed more than 30 documentaries for television and Editorial Planeta, of special interest is the documentary series “Cambios,” winner of the Barcelona City Award 2006. In 2001 he shot in the Netherlands “Viaje a Narragonia” his first feature film documentary in 35 mm, distributed by Sherlock and shown in 12 cities throughout Spain. This film participated in several international film festivals, including Karlovy Vary, Madrid, Huelva, Rome and Toronto. It also participated in the pre-selection of the Goya Awards in 2004. “My life with Carlos” is his second feature film documentary in 35 mm.

 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

 

Making this film involved a significant personal effort. I had to unveil my emotions, my doubts, my insecurities. I had to subject my family to a catharsis and force them to break their silence. I thought this was a necessary process for us to undergo, that we would manage to retrieve Carlos as a person and that eventually all this emotional effort would be translated into an intimate yet universal film; I had to convince them to play out their own lives. They finally agreed, though I couldn’t tell whether out of conviction, or if they just did it for me. Doubts and fears were always lurking around this process, and the double role was a major challenge for me. I needed the ability to be inside the story in a close and honest way, yet as a the director, I also needed the necessary detachment to keep a clear perspective. My purpose was always to make a film, not family therapy. So to make the film I had to tread through both universes. The task was not easy; the frailness of intimate stories turns it into a complex endeavour. I was searching for that fine and delicate line that draws the clean and unassuming emotion of a story that should be categorical and able to transmit a truth. Nevertheless, the danger of falling into mushy and corny sentimentality was always around. The shaping and perfecting of the story to attain a narrative structure with the appropriate balance between the aesthetic and emotional components and the content of the story itself, was a long and complex process. The editing of the film took over a year, and I always held the conviction that we could create a profound, beautiful and vital story. One that could restore memory and would also be capable of accurately and forcefully transmitting the horrors of injustice and crime. The challenge was also to tell, through a family story, the story of thousands of Chileans as well as of hundreds of thousands throughout the world.

 

 

 

Nir Bergman, Intimate Grammar

Nir Bergman was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1969. Nir graduated with honors the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School. His graduate film Sea Horses (narrative, 16 mm) was screened at over 40 festivals worldwide, and won ten awards including those for the best film at the Lodz Film Festival and the Munich Student Film Festival.  Broken Wings, Bergman’s first feature film, received the prize for the best film and best script at the Jerusalem International Film Festival, 2002, and was the winner of the Grand Prix at the Tokyo International Film Festival.  Broken Wings was also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival 2003, and winner of 3 prizes at the Berlinale 2003, including Audience Award.

 

Bergman co-wrote the series Reaching for Heaven, which won Israeli Academy awards and best dramatic series award at the Jerusalem International Film Festival 2001. He also wrote and directed Walk the Dog, winner of 3 Israeli Academy Awards, including Best TV Drama Mini-Series, and Best Director and Writer. Bergman is also among the writers and directors of TV series In Treatment. Intimate Grammar is his second feature film, and it won the Best Full Length Feature Award at the Jerusalem International Film Festival 2010.

 

Filmography

2010 - Intimate Grammar (Hadikduk Hapnimi) .

2008 – Castles in the Sky (Migdalim Ba'Avir)

2007 - Walk the Dog (Lehotzi et Hakelev) 

2005 - In Treatment (Betipul) 

2003 – Meorav Yerushalmi  

2002 - Broken Wings (Knafaim Shvurot) 

2001 - Reaching for Heaven (Litpos et Hashmaim) 

1998 - Sea Horses (Sussei Yam) 

 

Director's Statement

In 1991, The Book of Intimate Grammar by David Grossman was published. I was 22 at the time and the book moved me like no book had ever done before. What touched me so much about this book, it is hard to say. Perhaps it was the loneliness of adolescent Aharon, or his view of the violent adults around him. Perhaps it was his friendship with Gidon, the kind which is experienced only in childhood, or the ground falling from under him when his family disintegrates. Perhaps it was just that I had also thought that physically I would never grow. It was probably for all these reasons and more… 

 

 

Ben Berkowitz, Polish Bar

Berkowitz recently completed principal photography on Polish Bar , his second feature film as a writer/director, with producer Effie T. Brown's, Duly Noted Inc. Polish Bar stars Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Judd Hirsch, Vincent Piazza, Golden Brooks, Meat Loaf, James Badge Dale and Richard Belzer. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Berkowitz wrote and directed his first critically acclaimed feature film, Straightman, which was a festival hit in 2000, winning multiple awards and is still a top DVD seller. With his production company Benzfilm Inc. he produced the Sundance documentary Rockets Redglare! in 2002 with actor Steve Buscemi, additionally featuring Matt Dillon and Willem Dafoe. In 2006, along with Studs Terkel, Benzfilm also produced Nice Bombs, an Iraq documentary funded by The Playboy Foundation’s Kristie Hefner, and Robert Deniro’s Tribeca All-Access Film Program. Berkowitz also co-produced the 2008 Sundance feature Half - life.

 

 

 

Roselyn Bosch, The Roundup

FILMOGRAPHY

As Director

2012 Rasputin

2010 The Roundup

2006 Animal

 

As Writer

2012 Rasputin

2010 The Roundup

2006 Animal

2002 Le Pacte du Silence

1998 In All Innocence

1992 1492: Conquest of Paradise

 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

 

Ilan Goldman had been talking about this “Round Up” for many years. It was an obsession. For my part, the fact that no images of the Round Up existed, aside from one picture of empty buses taken in front of the Vel’ d’Hiv,’ upset me. I am not a Jew, but we have a lot in common, especially children! Bicultural children who might have been persecuted…the children, I believe, made me look at the Second World War and at the Holocaust from a different perspective. The Holocaust is precisely what makes the Second World War a very different war. And within this atrocious exception, for the first time, adults specifically chose to harm children with one objective in mind: destroying them! It is unique in history on such a scale! 1.5 million of them perished. It is one of the reasons I agreed to make this movie, wanting to do it from the children’s point of view.

 

 

 

 

Netalie Braun, The Hangman

Netalie Braun is a film director screenwriter and producer of documentary and fiction films, a writer, a lecturer in film schools and the artistic director of the international women’s film festival in Israel. She has BA in Literature and Philosophy and MA in Film studies from Tel-Aviv University.

 

Filmography

The Hangman (doc) 2010

Metamorphosis (doc) 2006

Gevald (short fiction) 2008

The last supper (short fiction) 2005

Core (short fiction) 2004

 

 

 

 

David de Jongh, Otto Frank, Father of Anne

Filmography 

2006-2008   Frans Bromet, filmmaker, documentary NPS-TV

    The restaurant of the future, corporate video Universiteit       Wageningen

    Connecting conversations, short films Walter Maashuis

    Musical editor Jazz at Six, Omroep Max-Radio

2004-2006   Ischa Meijer, life and work, documentary VPRO-Radio

    The history of the newsreader, documentary VPRO-Radio

2003-2004   The eighth day, short films, Humanistische omroep-TV

    Physical consequences of the ramadan, short reports NMO-Radio

1999-2002   Please show some consideration, documentary IKON-Radio

    Goodbye to my church, documentary IKON-Radio

    Mirrors, biographical interviews, RVU-Radio

    Toby Vos, life and work, documentary Amsterdam-TV

1996-1998     Swinging Bird John Engels, documentary NPS-Radio

    Off the road, documentary Amsterdam-TV

    In the frontline, Amsterdam Police in World War II, Amsterdam-TV

1994-1996     Gustav Mahler, a portrait, documentary Classic FM Holland

    History of an orchestra, documentary Classic FM Holland

    Presentor/ editor Swing along, Jazz Radio

1993-1994     Newsreader ANP  

    Editor KRO-TV

1991-1993     Reporter Amsterdam-TV

    Presentor Concertzender 

 

Director’s Statement

 

Otto Frank, father of Anne, paints the portrait of a benign, broken yet resilient man. After losing his two daughters and his wife he finds comfort in making his daughter’s diary famous. The film shows his tireless efforts in managing this success. And the dilemmas and criticism Otto Frank has to face because of his efforts. The story is told by carefully combining interviews, documents, stock footage, beautifully shot images of, amongst others, Poland and a selection from the ten thousands of letters Frank wrote and received. Ultimately, the film takes the viewer deeper and deeper into the depths of Otto Frank’s soul.

 
 
 

Edward Dmytryk, The Juggler

 Edward Dmytryk grew up in San Francisco, the son of Ukrainian immigrants. After his mother died when he was 6, his strict disciplinarian father beat the boy frequently, and the child began running away while in his early teens. Eventually, juvenile authorities allowed him to live alone at the age of 15 and helped him find part-time work as a film studio messenger. Dmytryk was an outstanding student in physics and mathematics and gained a scholarship to the California Institute of Technology. However, he dropped out after one year to return to movies, eventually working his way up from film editor to director. 

 

In the 1970s, as his directing career ground to a halt, Dmytryk recalled some advice once given him by Garson Kanin, and returned to academic life, this time as a teacher. From 1976 to 1981 he was a professor of film theory and production at the University of Texas at Austin, and in 1981, was appointed to a chair in filmmaking at the University of Southern California, a position he held until about two years before his death. During his teaching career, he also authored several books on various aspects of filmmaking, as well as two volumes of memoirs.

 

 

 

Andrea Dorfman, Flawed

 Andrea Dorfman is an artist and filmmaker based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has made numerous short experimental and dramatic films as well as two feature films, Parsley Days (2000) and Love That Boy (2003). Dorfman also made a full-length documentary, Sluts (2005), and is currently working in animation at the National Film Board of Canada. She is also in development with her third feature film, Harmony. Aside from making films, she teaches film and video part time at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and is the co-creator of Blowhard, a thematic storytelling series running in Halifax for the past two years.

 

Directors Statement

 

Flawed is the story of my own, personal, flaw but I believe everyone has felt flawed at some point in their lives. It could be something in our physical being that we think is imperfect, something we’d like to change or wish was different – big ears, thick calves, thin hair, pigeon toed…It could even be a personality trait, as in, maybe you think you procrastinate too much or wish you were wittier or wish you could pick up the piano faster. Or maybe it’s not quite being comfortable with all of the changes that come with aging. At the end of the day, EVERYONE feels flawed in some way.

 

 

 

Joseph Dorman, Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness

Joseph Dorman is an award-winning independent filmmaker and the founder of Riverside Films. He has created a wide variety of programming for PBS, CBS, Discovery Channel and CNN, and is a winner of television’s prestigious, George Foster Peabody Award for excellence. He has also twice been nominated for Emmy Awards for outstanding cultural and public affairs programming. 

 

In addition to his current film, Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness, Mr. Dorman wrote and directed the critically acclaimed documentary, Arguing the World about the controversial sixty-year political journey of the eminent political writers and thinkers, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer. The New York Times’ Stephen Holden described it as “enthralling… one of the deepest portraits of… ideas ever filmed,” and David Denby, writing in New York Magazine, called it “Superb.” It was named one of the best films of 1998 by The New York Times and New York Magazine. 

 

Mr. Dorman co-wrote the script of the documentary blockbuster, The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Journey, which played to packed houses across the country and was named the best documentary of 2001 by the National Board of Review and described by film critic Andrew Sarris as “extraordinary.” He also wrote the theatrically‐released documentary Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry. 

He was a senior producer for the prime time PBS newsmagazine series on the news media, Media Matters hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex Jones, has produced numerous films on the developing world for PBS, Discovery and the United Nations including a profile of Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan and was a producer for the PBS series The Eleventh Hour. 

In 1999 Mr. Dorman was invited along with playwright Arthur Miller and director Joan Micklin Silver to give one of Harvard University’s annual William E. Massey Sr. Lecture in the history of American Civilization. 

 

 

Director’s Statement

 

Like most documentary filmmakers, I “stumble” on the ideas for the films I make. For a film to be any good at all, I think, it has to tap into a part of the subconscious; to trigger some unresolved issue that one needs to work through. In the case of Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness, a friend, Jeffrey Shandler, a professor of Yiddish and Jewish studies at Rutgers, first suggested the idea of a film on the author and I reluctantly began to explore it with him. 

I knew little about Sholem Aleichem except that he had written the stories of Tevye the Dairyman that had become the basis of Fiddler on the Roof. I remembered that my parents had a copy of the Tevye stories on their bookshelf, but I couldn’t remember anyone in my home ever picking it up to read it. 

 

As I would soon learn, generations of Jews had copies of books by Sholem Aleichem on their shelf, even if they never read them. They functioned as a kind of talisman of Jewishness. And like most of those people, I imagined Sholem Aleichem to be some old Yiddish grandfather, his stories pieces of schmaltz like so much of popular Jewish culture. It must be full of nostalgia wrapped in sentimentality to be served in overstuffed portions for the Jewish masses. 

 

Of course, I knew nothing. 

 

I was afflicted by the general amnesia that affects much of American Jewry regarding an East European world from which we came a little more or less than a hundred years ago. That amnesia is abetted by the overwhelming American desire to assimilate, to fit in; to misremember one’s past in order to shape it for present and future needs. 

 

I soon discovered through the help of Jeffrey and the work of people like Ruth Wisse, Dan Miron, Hillel Halkin, David Roskies and others who appear in the film was that Sholem Aleichem was a writer of complexity and depth. That his work was full of irony and darkness and his world far different from the one I had imagined it to be. 

 

Sholem Aleichem was, in fact, a modern master of the short story and especially the monologue, so much so that he could take his intuitive understanding of common Yiddish speech, place that speech in the mouth of a semi-literate 19th century Jewish shtetl dweller and produce psychologically and sociologically complex portraits of a deteriorating world and its poor and disoriented inhabitants. And somehow, on top of it all, he could be generous enough in spirit to serve almost singlehandedly as a cultural backbone for a Jewish civilization desperately in need of support and encouragement. That he could, in short, stare directly into the darkness and laugh, and, miraculously, make others laugh with him. 

 

What I also discovered was that Sholem Aleichem, who had so brilliantly held up a mirror to those shtetl Jews, could somehow still hold a mirror up to me so that I could understand my life better, could understand how I perceived the world, and how it felt to be a Jew in a world where my own religious beliefs were constantly in flux and the traditions of my parents and grandparents eroding all around me. I had struggled all my life with what it meant to be a Jew if I didn’t pray weekly, much less daily; if I sometimes believed in God and sometimes didn’t. I learned that my confusion was also Sholem Aleichem’s confusion and Tevye’s confusion and that that link was vital to me as it had been to my great-grandparents in the shtetl. The important thing, in the end, is to wrestle with the ambivalences of identity. Only by doing so can we hope to hold on to our ever‐shifting identities in any meaningful way. 

 

While Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness is technically a biography, I have never quite seen it that way. I wanted to use Sholem Aleichem to explore an entire world and felt I could because he managed to embody that world in his work and his life. In fact for many, the very phrase “the world of Sholem Aleichem” has become shorthand for the nineteenth century world of the shtetl. In the same way that I was able to discover my own East European Jewish past through Sholem Aleichem’s work, to reconnect with it, I hope that those who watch the film can do the same. I had been given an idea for a film and stumbled onto a powerful personal exploration. I can only hope that those who happen to “stumble” into the theater because of something they’ve read in the paper or the words of a friend can find their way back to Sholem Aleichem and his work, too. If they do, they will find no answers – Sholem Aleichem was too shrewd to think that there were any – but, instead, a host of questions that will echo provocatively throughout the course of their lives. 

 
 
 
 

Duki Dror, Incessant Visions - Letters From an Architect

A critically acclaimed filmmaker, whose credits include 20 signature documentaries, Dror studied film and theater at UCLA and in Columbia College in Chicago. Among his films: Raging Dove (2002) – the story of Arab-Israeli world boxing champion Johar Abu-Lashin – premiered at SXSW festival and won many awards world-wide; Mr. Cortisone Happy Days (co-directed with Shlomi Shir 2004) – a jarring documentary about dying of cancer - won awards at Seoul EBS festival and at Documenta Madrid; The Journey of Vaan Nguyen (2005) – a feature documentary about the Vietnamese “boat people” –has premiered at IDFA, won Remi Award at Houston Worldfest and showcased in more than 30 festivals worldwide. Side Walk (2007) has screened at Doc Barcelona in 2008 and won the Best Cinematography Award. Across the River (2009) the story of an Ethiopian born HIV activist journey to save his community. This year a series of his films has aired on the PBS across the country.

 

 

 

 

Shlomi Eldar, Precious Life

Shlomi Eldar reports on Arab affairs on Israel’s commercial Channel 10. He began his career with the public Channel 1, and it was then that he first began reporting from the Gaza Strip.  For almost two decades he has been bringing to the Israeli public the hidden faces and human stories of the “little people” who live on the other side of the border in a strip of land trapped between Israel and Egypt, home to over one million Palestinians. The task that Shlomi Eldar undertook was not an easy one, because some of those of Israel prefer to close their eyes to everything that happens in Gaza, which has become over the years – and, especially since the Hamas movement has taken control – into Israel’s number one security issue.

 

In 2007, Eldar was awarded the prestigious Sokolov Prize, Israel’s most important media prize and the local equivalent of the Pulitzer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feliks Falk, Joanna

Film and theatre director, screenwriter, playwright. Born in 1941 in Stanisławowo, Poland. A graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (faculty of graphics and painting, 1966) and Łódź National Film School (directing). Graphics designer, author of theatre, television and radio plays, lecturer of the Łódź Film School. Feliks Falk is one of the most renowned Polish directors; one of the co-creators of the “cinema of moral anxiety” movement in the Polish cinema of the 70s along with Krzysztof Kieślowski and Agnieszka Holland. His films got numerous prizes worldwide. 

 

Filmography:

 

1973 – Accommodation / Nocleg

1975 – An Actress [in: Pictures From Life] / Aktorka [w: Obrazki z życia]

Midsummer / W środku lata  (Special Mention at the San Remo IFF’76)

1977 – Top Dog / Wodzirej (Golden Grapes and Don Quixote Award at Lagow FF’78)

1979 – Besides [in: Family Situations] / Obok [w: Sytuacje rodzinne]

Opportunity / Szansa (Best Screenplay Award at the Gdansk FF’79, III Prize at the Rotterdam IFF’80, Ecumenical Jury Prize at the Locarno IFF’80)

1981 – There Was Jazz / Był jazz (Grand Prix of the Koszalin FF, Polish Jazz Archive Award 

at the Gdansk FF’84)

1984 – The Idol / Idol

1986 – Hero of the Year / Bohater roku (Best Director Award at the Gdansk FF’86, Special 

Jury Prize and Soviet Filmmakers Association Award at the Moscow IFF’87);

Uninvited Guest / Nieproszony gość 

1989 – Capital, or How to Make Money in Poland / Kapitał, czyli jak zrobić pieniądze w 

Polsce

1991 – End of the Game / Koniec gry

1993 – Illicit Act / Samowolka (Best Director Prize at the Gdynia FF’93)

1994 – Summer of Love / Lato miłości

1995 – Far from Home / Daleko od siebie

2000 – Faces and Masques / Twarze i maski  (TV series)

2005 – A Story of One Board [in: Solidarity, Solidarity...] / Historia jednej tablicy [w: 

Solidarność, Solidarność…]

2005 – The Collector / Komornik  (Ecumenical Jury Prize at the 56th Berlin International Film 

Festival 2006, Grand Prix, Best Cinematography, Best Actor, Best Screenplay Awards at 

the Gdynia FF 2005, Hartley-Merrill Screenwriting Prize 2003)

 

 

 

 

Ann Marie Fleming, I Was A Child of Holocaust Survivors

Ann Marie Fleming is a Vancouver-based award-winning filmmaker, writer and artist whose work often explores themes of family, history and memory in a continuing media critique. Born in Japan, of Chinese and Australian parentage, she has been obsessed with issues of immigration and diaspora, personal and cultural histories, and how they intersect.

 

She is known for her work in hybridity, often combining different genres, such as documentary, animation and fiction. Her personal memoir, You Take Care Now, won best experimental student film at the Montreal World Film Festival in 1989 and best short at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Her 1990 documentary, New Shoes: An Interview in Exactly 5 Minutes, won best short film at TIFF, as did Blue Skies, a riff on 9/11, in 2002. Her 2003 animated documentary, The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam, unveiling the history of her great-grandfather, a world-famous travelling acrobat and magician, won various awards across North America. Her subsequent graphic novel of the same name won the Doug Wright Award for best Canadian comic book in 2008 and was nominated for two Eisner Awards. Her dark comedy, The French Guy, won best feature at the Boston Underground Film Festival in 2006. Fleming has made short animated films for CBC’s DNTO and Discovery’s Planet Green network in the United States, and is always up for a karaoke video. I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors is her fourth collaboration with the NFB.

 

 

 

 

Eytan Fox, Mary Lou

Eytan Fox’s THE BUBBLE (2006) was shown in the Berlin International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, and won more than 20 jury and audience awards at festivals around the world. Fox’s WALK ON WATER (2004) became one of the most successful Israeli films abroad. The story of a Mossad secret service agent who befriends the gay grandson of an ex-Nazi officer was released successfully in over 25 countries. Previously, YOSSI & JAGGER (2002), the love affair between two officers in the Israeli army, became an international breakout hit. Both WALK ON WATER and YOSSI & JAGGER have achieved international cult status on DVD.

 

Fox was born in New York City, and at an early age he moved with his family to Israel. He grew up in Jerusalem, then studied at Tel Aviv University’s School of Film and Television. His first film, TIME OFF, a 45-minute drama about sexual identity in the Israeli army, won him acclaim and led to the making his first feature, SONG OF THE SIREN, a romantic comedy which became Israel’s biggest box office success in 1994. 

 

Between 1997 and 2000, Fox created and directed the Israeli TV dramatic series “Florentine,” which examined the life of young people in Tel Aviv before and after the Rabin assassination.

Mr. Fox is in pre-production for a romantic comedy and is also shooting a sequel to YOSSI & JAGGER.

 

Filmography

2006 THE BUBBLE written by Eytan Fox and Gal Uchovsky, produced by Gal Uchovsky        

2004 WALK ON WATER written by Eytan Fox and Gal Uchovsky, produced by Gal Uchovsky

2002 YOSSI & JAGGER produced by Gal Uchovsky

1997 GOTTA HAVE HEART musical short written by Gal Uchovsky

1994 SONG OF THE SIREN

1990 TIME OFF 

 

 

 

Josh Freed, Five Weddings and A Felony 

Writer, Producer, Director, Editor, Cinematographer Josh Freed has been working in long-form non-fiction film for the past 5 years. After interning for Barbara Kopple at Cabin Creek Films, Josh Associate Produced David Schisgall’s film, Very Young Girls. Subsequently, Josh edited several web videos for Vanity Fair Magazine’s website as well as other sites, and then assistant edited Ten Trillion And Counting for PBS Frontline. Five Weddings and a Felony is Josh’s first feature film as a director.

 

 

 

Director’s Statement

I began making the film that became Five Weddings and a Felony when I was 24 as a courtship strategy to win over a woman I felt unworthy of, with no idea what I was doing, hoping just the fact that I was doing it would impress her. It (the film) was abandoned several times as I fled relationships I was afraid to commit to, but I kept returning to it because the women in my life just seemed so screen-worthy to me, and I hoped the footage might illuminate the mystery of why such beautiful creatures would ever be attracted to me. It didn’t. It shall remain a mystery. But over the 4 years it took to finish it, the film came to represent for me my slow march toward adulthood – as if only a complete document of all my selfish behaviors and irrational fears would allow me to move beyond them. 

 

Though the film is full of my own idiosyncrasies, it also reflects a trend among my generation (you may say I’m messed up, but I’m not the only one). Some researchers and psychologists want to codify a new life stage, between adolescence and adulthood, called “emerging adulthood,” because we twenty somethings are taking our sweet time getting to those milestones – financial independence, marriage, children – that our parents achieved at 23, 24, 25. Emerging adulthood is marked, according to a recent New York Times Magazines article, by “identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling inbetween and… a sense of possibilities.” And there are so many possibilities: for those of us whose parents are liberals from the 60’s – they encourage us to explore, find ourselves, try different relationships. Premarital sex and cohabitation are so widely accepted we don’t feel much pressure to get married. Even though the economy collapsed and we fear we’ll never have job stability, we know that the world is changing faster than it ever has before, which means more potential for exciting achievements (or, devastating failures). At its heart, Five Weddings is a journey into modern courtship, with the unique intimacy afforded by the tiny Flip camera. Any woman who has ever been in the unfortunate situation of being attracted to a man-child like me will relate to it, as will all the guys out there who have ever been afraid of the idea of marriage and children. I know there are plenty of you out there.

 

 

 

Liz Garbus, Bobby Fischer Against the World

Academy Award®-Nominated, Emmy-Winning Director/Producer Liz Garbus is one of America’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers.  Her most recently completed project, “Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech,” premiered at Sundance 2009, and was broadcast on HBO the same year.  Other directorial credits include “The Farm: Angola, USA,” nominated for an Academy Award, and winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize; “The Execution of Wanda Jean” (Sundance Film Festival, HBO), “The Nazi Officer’s Wife,” “Girldhood,” “Yo Soy Boricua!, Pa Que Tu Lo Sepas,” co-directed by Rosie Perez, and “Coma” (HBO).  Garbus, along with Rory Kennedy, also executive produced the 2006 Academy Award-nominated film “Street Fight,” and “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,” which won the Emmy® Award for Best Documentary in 2007.  

 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT 

 

It's hard to imagine it now, but in 1972, America was chess-obsessed.  The Soviet Union had used chess to demonstrate its intellectual superiority to the West, and here came a lone American, demolishing the Russian masters of the sport.  At the height of his career, it was said that Bobby was better known than any other man in the world besides Jesus Christ.  Relentless press attention, political pressure, and a monomaniacal focus on chess ultimately led to his undoing.  The film explores how a dysfunctional family background, a focus on chess to the exclusion of all else, and the unremitting pressures of fame on the young, all conspired to destroy one of the great geniuses of our time.  He is a sportsman, a genius, a visionary; but he is also a recluse, a fugitive, a madman.  Everybody knows the name "Bobby Fischer," but nobody knows the man.

 

The opportunity to tell any life story is an exciting and daunting one, and in the case of Bobby Fischer I felt the weight of it acutely.  This was a man who was alternately admired and despised by those who knew him, very little understood by the public that revered him, who was socially awkward and deeply private, at the same time that he was one of the best known names in world.  Many of those closest to Bobby refused to speak to the press for fear he would disown them, so a complete and frank assessment of his life could not truly be told until his death.  

 

January 18, 2008 - the day Bobby’s obituary appeared on the front page of the New York Times - I was on a plane to the Sundance Film Festival.  I had always been fascinated by his character, by chess, by the links between genius and madness.  I began research and development the next day.  Having shot films on death row, maximum security prisons and hospital wards, I imagined that making a film about the late great chess master would be a storytelling and aesthetic challenge, but I did not assume I would be walking into a tangled web of complex and thorny allegiances, of betrayal and broken promises, of fierce loyalties to the point of blindness.  

 

The question of “was he mad, or wasn’t he” divided his friends into warring camps.  Those who acknowledged that he was suffering from mental illness and should seek professional help were cut out of his inner circle.  His friends grilled me before agreeing to speak, wary of my motives.  Would I portray him as the mad recluse or the great champion who said some unfortunate things?  We were googled and scrutinized, put on trial. There was no middle ground.  Even after his death, Bobby was a divisive figure, who split his associates to opposite sides of the chessboard.

 

Given that process, there are those who got away.  But there were many, many more who finally decided to come forward and participate.  There will surely be those who knew Bobby who will take umbrage with our portrayal, but I do believe we have accomplished the most complete and intimate account of his life to date, turning over every stone in order to depict a man who often lived in hiding.  I was fortunate to tap into a variety of film and photo archives, including the archive of world-renowned photographer Harry Benson, who was granted exclusive access to Fischer before, during and after the 1972 match.  There are also never-before-seen photographs, letters and writings, as well as fascinating footage of Bobby's last months of life in Iceland.  In editing, we have crafted a style where Bobby himself narrates his life story; beginning, middle and end.  In our interviews - from Bobby’s closest friends and family members to cultural luminaries like Henry Kissinger, Malcolm Gladwell and Garry Kasparov - we explore not only Bobby the person and master, but also the context of Bobby as a pop culture hero and reluctant patriot.  The goal:  to live inside the head of one of the most misunderstood and fascinating men of the late 20th Century.  

 

The greatest trial that came in making this film had nothing to do with Bobby Fischer.  On January 29, 2010, Karen Schmeer finished a long day of work in our edit room and was headed home, when she was hit by a car speeding from a drugstore robbery and killed.  Karen was considered one of the best editors in our field.  It was our first collaboration.  We fought hard to get her on the project.  She loved Bobby’s story.  She loved the quirky people who surrounded him.  The day before she died she wrote me an email, while I was again at the Sundance Film Festival, with the subject: “He’s infecting my mind.”  The note said simply:  “I forgot to tell you - last night I had a dream that I was hanging out w. Bobby Fischer in Park City during the festival.  (The young, egotistical version.)”  I just wish so much we were hanging out together in Park City during this festival.  

 
 
 

 

Roni Geffen, Transparent Black

Roni Geffen is a documentary filmmaker who lives in Israel. In 2006 Geffen finished a B.A. degree in Sociology, Anthropology and Communication in the Hebrew University which led her into documentary filmmaking. She will finish her MFA in Films and Television in Tel Aviv University in 2011. Geffen works as a director and researcher for documentary films and TV programs. In 2007, she received the Israeli Documentary Creators Forum prize for the research of "To see if I'm smiling" (Tamar Yarom, 2007, won the Audience Award and Silver Wolf Award, IDFA, 2007). This year Geffen was selected to the program of the IFDA Academy for emerging documentary filmmakers. Her films "Transparent Black" and "Dear Sister" were both broadcasted in different documentary channels in Israel, and have been screened at numerous international film festivals. In May 2011, "Transparent Black" will participate in the International competition the 57th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Recently Geffen joined producer David Fisher ("Fisher Features") to develope a feature length film- "Refugee Team" concerned with the subject of refugees and asylum seekers in Israel. 

 

 

Director's Filmography

"I to love" (fiction, 2007, 17 min) a short fiction film about a girl commander in the Israeli army who deals with a Russian immigrant which finds himself subjected to her command. 

"Dear Sister" (doc, 2010, 41 min) The film follows  a Holocaust survivor who has been looking for his adopted sister since the end of World War II. The film was aired in October 2010 in "Yes Doco", a documentary Israeli channel.

"Transparent Black" (doc, 2010, 20 min)

 

Director's Statement

 

My interest in refugees began during my Anthropology studies, and led me to volunteer in ARDC organization, which was established by African refugees. While teaching, I decided to create a movie focusing on a group of refugees that studies Hebrew and to express their condition in Israel through the few Hebrew words they know. I want the viewer to understand who they are and where they are coming from, what brought them to come to Israel and what are the difficulties they are dealing with. Documentary films should aspire, in my opinion, to say something about the reality we are living in. 

 

I hope to raise a critical discussion addressing Israel's refusal to deal with the refugee issue. "They have no place for us. They should understand us, since they themselves are refugees," says Philo to Kokou sadly. The refugee issue touches the Israeli society in which being a refugee is an integral part of its existence. Only two hundred asylum seekers were recognized as refugees under the UN treaty that was initiated by the State of Israel in the wake of the Holocaust. Israel paradoxically avoids making policies regarding refugees, whose plight exposes our own existential anxiety. It seems it's time for the Israeli society to look its refugees in the eyes.

 
 
 

 

Danny Gold, 100 Voices: A Journey Home 

Danny’s passion for film began with a super 8 camera given to him for his 10th birthday.  He studied film in high school and college.  He was the executive producer and was directly responsible for discovering and setting up MGM’s “Agent Cody Banks” franchise. After a brief foray into the world of law as an entertainment attorney specializing in all aspects of production, he left the field and returned to his film making roots devoting his full efforts to directing, producing and writing. 

 

In his first few years as a producer, he produced three independent features and two studio films—“18 Shades of Dust”, starring Danny Aiello and William Forsythe. (Flashpoint Pictures); “Love and Action In Chicago” which starred Courtney B. Vance, Jason Alexander, Kathleen Turner, Regina King and Edward Asner, (an official selection to the 1999 Toronto Film Festival); “Wish You Were Dead” starring Cary Elwes, Elaine Hendrix, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Steenburgen, Gene Simmons and Robert Englund. (Icon Productions/Newmarket Capitol) “Agent Cody Banks,” starring Frankie Muniz and Hillary Duff (MGM) and “Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London,” starring Muniz and Anthony Anderson. (MGM).

 

Danny’s desire to expand creatively as a writer, director and producer led to his formation of Mod Three Productions (M3P) with his lifelong friend, Matthew Asner.  He has found commercial and creative success in producing projects in the motion picture, television and DVD genres. He has produced, directed and/or written numerous projects for networks such as MTV, History Channel, ABC Family, studios such as MGM, 20th Centruy Fox, Dreamworks, Warner Bros. and the Walt Disney Company to name a few.  Danny has also co-directed with Matthew the recent feature film documentary “Season of the Samurai” which was an official selection to the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and opened the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal.  The film recently had its broadcast premiere on the Major League Baseball Network.  His extensive production experience coupled with his creative ingenuity prove to be an invaluable addition to the M3P family.

 

 

 

Karen Goodman, Strangers No More

Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman have made over twenty documentaries and in the process have garnered four Academy Award nominations, three Emmys and the DuPont-Columbia Award for Independent Programming. They have received filmmaking grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, and the American Film Institute.

 

Their documentaries have been broadcast nationally on PBS, HBO, and MTV, and screened at festivals around the world including the New York Film Festival, Sundance, New Directors / New Films, London, Berlin, Montreal and St. Petersburg. In addition, they have overseen and filmed dance preservation projects for the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Lincoln Center's Library and Museum of the Performing Arts. 

 

Both Mr. Simon and Ms. Goodman are active voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They have served as consultants to the National Endowment for the Humanities Media Program, on the Documentary Screening Committee for the Academy Awards and as judges for the Emmy Awards and the DuPont-Columbia Broadcast Journalism Award.

 

Filmography

Strangers No More (2010)

A documentary profiling a school in south Tel Aviv, where children from fortyeight different countries and diverse backgrounds come together to learn. The film follows students who share their difficult stories and struggle to acclimate to life in Israel.

 

MASTERCLASS (2010) - HBO

A nine-part series that documents the experience of a small group of emerging

young artists working with a notable mentor. The series encourages young artists

to pursue their dreams and hopes to help fill a void in arts education in America.

With Placido Domingo, Liv Ullmann, Edward Albee, Frank Gehry, Jacques

d’Amboise, Olafur Eliasson, Bill T. Jones, Michael Tilson Thomas and Julian

Schnabel.

 

The Sealed Orders of Liv Ullmann (2009) - HBO

After a lifetime of learning - and two Academy Award nominations – actress Liv

Ullmann comes full circle by mentoring a group of talented teenage drama

students. In the midst of preparing to direct Cate Blanchett in "Streetcar Named

Desire," she takes time out to work with the young actors on the same play.

Together, they surprise and learn from each other, underscoring the importance

of passing experience on from one generation to the next.

 

Locks of Love: The Kindest Cut (2008) - HBO

A film about Locks of Love, an organization that provides hairpieces to financially

disadvantaged children from around the country who have lost their hair from

cancer treatments, alopecia, or other medical conditions. The film tells the stories

of the people who donate their hair and of two children who are being helped by

Locks of Love.

 

Rehearsing a Dream (2006) - HBO

Academy Award Nomination: Best Documentary Short Subject

The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts brings together the

country’s most promising high school performing, visual and literary artists for

one transformative week. With Michael Tilson Thomas, Mikhail Baryshnikov,

Vanessa Williams and Jacques d’Amboise.

 

Coming Out Stories (2006) - MTV/Logo

An eight part documentary series portraying the diverse journeys of gays and

lesbians as they experience coming out – including a mayor of a small California

city to his constituency, an identical twin to her sibling and a husband to his wife

of twelve years. “This touching series marks a high point for the network.”

Entertainment Weekly

Strangers No More Press Kit 8

 

Smashed: Toxic Tales of Teens and Alcohol (2004) - HBO

IDA Nomination: Best Documentary

Spirit Award

Parent’s Choice Award

Stories of teenagers and their families whose lives have been brutalized by the

tragic link between drinking and driving. “Haunting…” - New York Times

 

Kindergarten! (2004) - HBO

IDA Nomination: Best Documentary Series

The first-ever real life documentary series for kids, 13 episodes following a year in

the life of one Kindergarten class. “If all parents watched, there would be

wholesale changes in the educational system across America” – Philadelphia

Inquirer

 

The Incredible Human Body (2002) - National Geographic/PBS

National Geographic Special about the world within us. Narrated by Kate

Burton. “Stretches the bounds of the biological documentary” - LA Times

 

No Applause, Just Throw Money (1998) - PBS

Emmy Award: Documentary Editing

New York Emmy Award: Outstanding Informational/Cultural Program

Silver Prize: Leningrad Film Festival

A kaleidoscopic film featuring 101 New York Performers. Premiered at New

Directors/New Films and Sundance film festivals before its national broadcast on

P.B.S. “An exuberant film”- New York Times.

 

Heart of a Child (1997) - HBO

Cable Ace Award: Best Documentary Special

The emotional story of a child in need of a heart and lung transplant and the

desperate search for a donor. “One of the year’s five best… Likely to remain

lodged in some corner of your consciousness for years to come...” - Tom Shales,

Washington Post.

 

27th and Prospect: One Year in the Fight Against Drugs (1997) - HBO

Cable Ace Award nomination: Best Public Affairs Special

Produced for the “Faces of Addiction” series. A portrait of an inner city

neighborhood’s struggle to combat the perils of substance abuse in their

community.

 

The Telephone (1997) - The American Experience/PBS

Chronicles the early history of the telephone. Narrated by Morley Safer and

featuring the voices of Spalding Gray, Frank Whaley, Kurt Vonnegut, and

Julianne Moore.

Strangers No More Press Kit 9

 

Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud (1996) - American

Masters/PBS

Emmy Nomination: Outstanding Cultural/Informational Program

DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton for Independent Programming

A feature length documentary biography of the American innovator. Premiered

at the Sundance Film Festival. “A top notch documentary.” - San Francisco

Chronicle. “Splendid and wittily absorbing…mesmerizing.” - Detroit Free Press.

 

Cairo Unveiled (1992) - National Geographic

Explores the role of women in Egypt through the eyes of one of the country’s

most celebrated belly dancers. Broadcast as the season premiere of the Explorer

series.

 

Backstage at Masterpiece Theatre (1992) - PBS

Emmy Award Nomination: Outstanding Informational/Cultural Program

An hour-long 20th anniversary retrospective chronicling the series’ two decades of

drama through excerpts and interviews with John Hurt, Ben Kingsley, Peggy

Ashcroft, Alistair Cooke and others.

 

Chimps: So Like Us (1990) - HBO

Academy Award Nomination: Best Documentary Short Subject

Emmy Award: Outstanding Informational/Cultural Program

The story of man’s closest living relative, the chimpanzee, through the eyes of

Jane Goodall, the naturalist who has devoted a lifetime to safeguard them. “More

affecting than the big screen’s “Gorillas in the Mist”– Hollywood Reporter.

 

Children’s Storefront (1988) - PBS

Academy Award Nomination: Best Documentary Short Subject

A stirring portrait of an extraordinary educational oasis in Harlem.

 

Isaac In America (1986) - American Masters/PBS

Academy Award Nomination: Best Feature Documentary

Biography of Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer. Screened at the New York

Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival.

 

Light of Many Masks (1981) - Discovery Channel

Balinese culture viewed through its unique masked dance-drama. Premiered on

Channel 4 in the U.K. and the Margaret Mead Film Festival.

 

Directors’ Statement

 

It’s hard to film a miracle. Telling the story of the remarkable Bialik- Rogozin School in Tel Aviv -- an extraordinary place where one can experience a sense of humanity so rich and pervasive it often feels impossible -- seemed a tremendous responsibility. Among the 750 refugees and immigrants from forty-eight countries and every known religion, we chose to follow three children who fled their homelands in Darfur, South Africa, and Eritrea. Over the course of fifteen months, we portrayed their struggles to forget the past and rebuild their lives in this rarest of communities, where truly no one is a stranger.

 
 
 
 
 

Ester Gould, Starring David

Ester Gould (1975, Scotland) has lived in the Netherlands since she was ten. She studied Film and Theatre in Amsterdam and New York. Having worked in the theatre, as a dramatist and assistant director, she began to focus on documentary films. She has now been working in film for twelve years, including working closely together with renowned documentary filmmaker Heddy Honigmann. She has done research, co-written scenarios and worked on the sets of prize-winning films such as Crazy, Dame la mano, Forever and Oblivion. Through a Master Degree in Journalism in 2006, she sharpened her skills as a researcher. She currently lives and works in Amsterdam.

 

Since 2005 she has herself been directing documentaries. For Sick of it all, a short children’s documentary, she won the IDFA Kids & Docs Script Award in 2008 and the Golden Olive Award at the Bunker Film Festival 2009 in Italy. Shout, her first long documentary - shot in Israel and Syria in co-direction with Sabine Lubbe Bakker, premiered in March 2010. Shout won the prize for Best Film at the London International Documentary Film Festival 2010 and a Special Mention at the Haifa International Film Festival 2010.

 

FILMOGRAPHY

 

SHOUT (2010) – In co-direction with Sabine Lubbe Bakker

A long documentary (74 min.) for Dutch public broadcaster IKON (produced by Pieter van Huystee Film).

Opening film DOX BOX 2010, Syria

Movies that Matter Festival 2010 in The Hague: Dutch premiere   

Prize for Best Film at the London Int. Documentary Film Festival (LIDF) 2010

Special Jury Mention at the Haifa International Film Festival 2010, Israel

Selected for Golden Calf Competition at the Dutch Film Festival 2010

Selected for Amnesty Award Competition at CPH: DOX, Denmark.

 

STILL GOING STRONG (2009) – In co-direction with Sarah Sylbing

A short documentary (25 min.) for community arts festival ‘Public Amusement’.

Selected for the International Bunker Film Festival 2009 in Italy

Screened by Dutch public broadcasters HUMAN and Holland Doc

 

SICK OF IT ALL (2008) 

A short children's documentary (16 min.) for Dutch public broadcaster NPS.

IDFA Kids & Docs Script Award 2008 

Golden Olive Award 2009, International Bunker Film Festival in Italy

Selected for competition at the Buster Film Festival in Denmark

 

50 CENTS (2007) – In co-direction with Sarah Sylbing

A short documentary (26 min.) for community arts festival ‘Public Amusement’. 

Winner audience Award at the International Bunker Film Festival 2008, Italy

NPS New Arrivals Competition, International Film Festival Rotterdam 2008

 

SOY OPTIMISTA (2007) – In co-direction with Sarah Sylbing & Jaap van ‘t Kruis

A documentary (50 min.) for Dutch public broadcaster HUMAN.

 

ADRELINE (2005) 

A short documentary (15 min.) for Dutch public broadcaster BNN (produced by Pieter van Huystee Film).

 

 

 

Noa Ben Hagai, Blood Relation

Graduated in 2004 from the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School - Jerusalem. 

Completed her M.F.A in Film &Television studies at the Tel Aviv University in 2009. 

 

2005- 2010- Director of "Einstein in the Holy Land" - a film following the journey of Albert Einstein’s through his journal entries of his trip in the Holy Land;  50min documentary for Channel 1 – Israel.

 

2004 - Co-Director & Editor of "Post Cards from Home" - a personal narrative of youth in the city of Ramla; 10 episodes documentary series for Channel 2 – Israel.

 

2003 - Director, Producer & Editor of "Brave Land" (graduation film) –  a personal journey to Cuba; 50min documentary for Channel 2 – Israel. 

 

2002 – Editor of the Cannes film Festival third place winner at Cin’foundation, "Questions of a Dead Worker," as well as the award winning film "A Different War." 

 

 

 

Julia Haslett, An Encounter with Simone Weil 

Born in London, based in New York City, filmmaker Julia Haslett makes expressionistic documentaries about contemporary and historical subjects. She is producer/director of the highly acclaimed Worlds Apart (2003) series about cross-cultural medicine, and producer of the companion hour-long documentary Hold Your Breath (2005), which broadcast on PBS in 2007. Her documentary shorts Hurt & Save (2001), Flooded (2003), Eclipsed (2007), and Pure & Simple (2008) have screened at numerous festivals and galleries, including Full Frame, Athens, and Rooftop Films. She has worked at WGBH-Boston, the Discovery Channel, and as a Filmmaker-in-Residence at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics. Julia earned a B.A. in English Literature from Swarthmore College and an M.F.A. in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College (CUNY). She was awarded a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and selected for IFP’s 2009 Documentary Lab.

 

Director’s Statement

 

You may love this film or you may hate it, but what you won’t feel is nothing. The questions it poses are fundamental and the stakes it raises are quite literally, life or death. And for that reason, the film can take a while to sink in. My idealistic hope is that once it does, it will bring a little more compassion into the world. I made this film for personal and political reasons. On the one hand, I was struggling to respond to the suffering within my own family. On the other, I was perpetually alarmed by the political and economic conditions of millions of people on this earth, and how my country was increasingly responsible for their misery. And this was all in the context of the rise of the Internet, the pervasiveness of personal digital devices, and a celebration of multi-tasking. In other words, a culture characterized by endless sources of distraction, by an infinite number of ways to avoid paying sustained attention to our fellow human beings. So when I read Simone Weil’s line, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” it resonated deeply. And when I discovered what an extraordinary person she was, and how relatively few people knew about her, I decided I had to make this film. Over the six years it took to make it, she became an inspiration and a source of strength. But at the same time she couldn’t be a role model. Her drive to self-destruction, whether seen in personal or political terms, was not something I could romanticize, especially given my own family history. What she did though is help me grapple with the scope of my responsibility to others. And for that I will be forever grateful.

 

 

 

 

Tomer Heymann, The Queen Has No Crown

Tomer Heymann was born in Kfar Yedidia in Israel in 1970 and has directed many documentary films and series in the past ten years, most of them long-term follow-ups and personal documentations. His films won major awards at different prestigious film festivals including his first film “It Kinda Scares Me”, that won the Israeli Academy Award.

 

“Paper Dolls” won three awards at the Berlin Film Festival, two awards at the Identities Film Festival, the “Best International Feature”  award at the Los Angeles Festival, “Best Documentary“ at the Cinemanila International Film Festival in the Philippines and many more. His film and TV series “Bridge over the Wadi,” co-produced with the American ITVS, won the Israeli Documentary Film competition, participated in IDFA Festival’s prestigious competition and won many awards around the world. Tomer’s 8-part series “The Way Home” won the “Best Documentary Series” award at the 2009 Jerusalem International Film Festival and “Best Documentary Series” at the Israeli Documentary Competition.

 

Tomer also directed documentaries about local culture heroes such as the musicians Aviv Geffen (“Aviv – Fucked Up Generation”), Idan Raichel (“Black Over White”) and the choreographer Ohad Neharin (“Out Of Focus”).

 

Tomer’s latest film “I Shot My Love” premiered at the Berlin Film Festival 2010 and has been screened at various festivals around the world . The film has won awards at the HotDocs Film Festival, Taiwan Documentary Int’l Film Festival, The Side By Side GLBT Film Festival, The Madrid GLBT Film Festival, The Queer Lisboa GLBT Film Festival and The Warsaw Jewish Film Festival.

 

Tomer’s films “Aviv – Fucked Up Generation“, “It Kinda Scares Me,”  “Paper Dolls” and “I Shot My Love” were theatrically released in cinemas in Israel and around the world, making Tomer one of the Documentary Film industry’s leading directors.

 

Filmography

2011 The Queen Has No Crown 85 min.

2010 I Shot My Love 70/56 min.

2009 The Way Home 8x30 min.

2007 Debut 5x22 min.

2007 Out of Focus 52 min.

2007 Black Over White 50 min.

2006 Cinderellas 4x30 min.

2006 Paper Dolls 80 min.

2006 Bridge over the Wadi 55 min.

2005 Bridge Over the Wadi 4x30 min.

2004 Paper Dolls 6x30 min.

2003 Aviv - Fucked-up Generation 74 min.

2001 It Kinda Scares Me 57 min.

2000 Laugh Till I Cry 45 min.

 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

 

The film tells the story of my family, which I documented over a period of fifteen years, interwoven with social-political chapters as seen through the lens of my camera. The personal mosaic starts with the disintegration of our family unit when my parents divorce at a late age. My three brothers, who emigrate from Israel, give rise to new thoughts about familiar concepts such as “family” and “self-realization,” and about life in Israel during a time of extreme terrorist attacks. 

 

The camera, which gives a feeling of closeness but also maintains a distance, enables direct encounters with a father who tries to draw closer, a lonely weeping mother, and myself – searching for my own personal love.

 

Old stills underline the passing of the years in the film, and the Passover Eve celebration is a moving visual axis for the years as they go by and the changing guests around the table.  The cinematic language is direct and profound, as are the questions posed to the people closest to me. The story that starts as a personal account ends with a sense that it is the story of all of us who live in this country and cope with the personal and the national in ways that are often inseparable.

 
 
 
 
 

Karin Kainer, Skate of Mind 

2010 - Director, screenplay and photography - short documentary film - 'Das iz der valt' - the story of two grave diggers Chevra Kadisha members - winner Doco Challenge - Docaviv. 

2008 - 2010 - Director, screenplay and photography documentary  'SKATE OF MIND.'

2009 - Director edits - in party election broadcasts 'KADIMA.' 

2007 - 2009 - Director - 'Abuja, Lagos ...' 

2007 - 2009 - Director & script two films to the government in Africa. 

2004 - 2007 - Director, cinematographer, script and producing a documentary film produced by Omar TV productions (Liora Landau) 'South Wind on Hilton Beach' - a film that deals with the history of surfing culture, fashion and music in the country. Screened on Channel 8, was screened around the country Cinematheques screening halls of the Third Ear. In competition at Haifa Film Festival 2006. 

2006 Rosh Pina Festival, Eilat 2007 Festival, Festival Toronto 07' was screened in festivals around the world. 

2006 - Director - a short documentary film - 'The Mann Auditorium' was screened in 2006 International Student Festival was shown on Channel 8.

2006- Director - documentary film 'The Genral' on the life of Gen. Uri Simhoni.

2006 - Director - Photographer in party election broadcasts 'KADIMA.' 

2004 - 2006: Director and editing studio sports content (Multi Cam) space channel 5 - the sport channel: a series of programs that track surf championships in the country online, half-hour broadcast on Channel 5 that the Israeli Channel U.S. and Canada. 

2004-2005 - Channel 1 - Director color stories - Hanan Azran program - 

'Full Disclosure' (a program dealing with the media). 

2004 - Director - color stories, coverage of football games broadcast -cables 

2001-2002: news corresponded - cables specializing in sports (football games broadcast).

 
 
 
 
 

Deborah Kaufman, Between Two Worlds

Directors Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman are award-winning documentary filmmakers whose works include “Blacks and Jews,” “Secrets of Silicon Valley,” and “Thirst.” Their films have been featured at the Sundance, Jerusalem, and many Jewish film festivals, and aired on public television’s acclaimed “P.O.V.” and “Independent Lens” series. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA today, and CNN, and has received support from the Ford, Rockefeller, Cummings and MacArthur foundations. Their films have been used by activists and opinion leaders around the world and have been translated into over fifteen languages and broadcast internationally. The ‘New Yorker’ magazine has said “Snitow and Kaufman bring a fair-minded skepticism to everything they film.”

 

Prior to her work as a documentary filmmaker, Kaufman founded and for 13 years was Director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the first and largest independent Jewish film showcase in the world. She has been active in a wide range of human rights, Jewish community, and cultural organizations and has served on a wide range of Boards including the California Council for the Humanities and Amnesty International USA. Kaufman is a graduate of University of California Hastings College of the Law and a member of the California Bar.

 

Prior to his film work, Snitow was producer at the top-rated KTVU-TV News, the Bay Area Fox affiliate, for 12 years. Before that he was the News Director for eight years at the Bay Area’s Pacifica Radio station KPFA-FM, winning the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Gold Award for Best Local Newscast. He has served on a wide range of Boards including the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the Film Arts Foundation, and the California Media Collaborative. He is a graduate of Cornell University and a member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

 
 
 
 

Ronit Kerstner, Torn

Ronit Kertsner is an award winning documentary Filmmaker - director, producer and editor.

Born in Jerusalem in 1956, married with two daughters, Ronit lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.

After her military service she was admitted to the Cinema Department at Tel Aviv University where she embarked on a four-year course of study. Upon completion Ronit began working as a professional editor of documentaries and features for TV and other media. Ronit has edited dozens of documentary films over the years.

 

For the last 10 years Ronit has directed and produced 4 documentaries:

"The Secret" Berlin Film Festival 2002, first prize at the international Film Festival in Bordeaux 2003

"I the aforementioned infant" Haifa film festival 2006

"Menachem and Fred" "cinema for peace" award Berlin 2009 Commercial screenings in movie theaters in Germany

"Torn" Docaviv international film festival

 

Directors Statement

 

Since my childhood I have known that I was adopted. When my father died, I happened to come across a piece of paper with the name of my biological mother. After a long search I managed to find the woman who gave birth to me. She now lives in Paris, and her family emigrated to France from Warsaw in Poland. It is possible that the "Polish connection" and the fact of my adoption aroused my interest in the story of the Jewish Priest, torn between two identities. The process he is experiencing in many ways resembles the process which I myself have experienced.

 
 
 
 

Aharon Keshales, Rabies

 Aharon Keshales was born in 1976 in Israel. He is a filmmaker, film critic and university lecturer. He has a B.A. in Film and Television and an M.A. in the Interdisciplinary Arts Program, both from Tel Aviv University. He is also the producer of the film Zeitgeist. Rabies is Aharon’s first feature film.

 

Directors’ Statement

 

We spent most of our childhood and teenage years watching horror films, a habit that we haven’t been able to shake until today. We dedicated so much time to indulging in cinematic nightmares that one day we just asked ourselves: “Why not make one?” Our main influences are those we acknowledge as being the masters: Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, George Romero, Brian De Palma, Joe Dante, Wes Craven, John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper. Later inspiration came from Takashi Miike, Rob Zombie and Quentin Tarantino. 

 

We felt a lot of responsibility rested on our shoulders when making this film. Israel’s film industry doesn’t rely on genre films. The two most typical types of film in Israel are military films (drama based as a pose to action based war films) and family dramas. There’s little room for comedy and no room at all for horror. So when we got the chance to offer something totally new to the local audience, we felt a huge responsibility to get it right and get the genre off to a good start. There is always a fear of failure, of becoming another cautionary tale in the industry.

Kalevet in Hebrew means rabies, a disease which attacks the nervous system. In Rabies a group of innocent characters are put into an intense environment and tested to see whether or not they will become “infected” and, in doing so, lose their humanity. The name of the film is metaphorical. Rabies is a satirical horror film about the intense and harsh difficulties of living in Israel. 

 

The film isn’t intended to educate audiences or preach a message. We wanted to create an entertaining film and if Rabies can make people laugh and feel terrified at the same time, we’ll be as happy as Freddy Kruger in a dream lab.

 
 
 
 

Jan Kidawa-Blonski, Little Rose 

JAN KIDAWA-BŁOŃSKI studied architecture at the Silesian Polytechnic in Gliwice and directing at the State Film School in Łódź.  In 1981 he graduated from the Directing department. 

 

1982 -1991 he worked with Silesia, Oko and Zodiak Film Studios

1991 - Co-founder and President of the Gambit Production Ltd. that produces features, documentaries, commercials, and TV programs

1990 –1994 President of the Association of the Polish Filmmakers 

1990 - 2001 member of the Polish Committee of Cinematography

1997 - 2001 member of the board of directors of the Association of Independent Film & TV Producers

 

FILMOGRAPHY 

1981- RING IN A PIG’S SNOUT ( Pierścień w świńskim ryju) – a Diploma film (30’)  awarded at the IFF of Student Films ( Berlin’83)  

1984- THREE FEET ABOVE THE GROUND  ( Trzy stopy nad ziemią)    

1988 – MEN’S BUSINESS  ( Męskie sprawy )  

1992- DAIRY IN A MARBLE ( Pamiętnik  znaleziony w garbie ):  presented among other at Berlin ’93, San Sebastian ‘93 ; World Montreal ‘94 ; awarded with the Golden Jaguar Award  for the Best Actor at  Cancun IFF ’93  

1996 – VIRUS (Wirus) 1999  ENCOUNTERS,PARTINGS ( A mi szerelmunk) -as Producer, actor only: presented among other  at  Moscow ’06   

2001 – THE LAST BLUES ( Az utolso blues ) -as Producer,actor only : awarded with Grand Prix  in Cairo ‘02  

2005- DESTINED FOR BLUES (Skazany na bluesa): presented among other in Moscow ‘06  2010 – LITTLE ROSE (Różyczka)

 
 
 
 

Pawel Kloc, Phnom Penh Lullaby

Paweł Kloc was born in 1971. He studied Law at the Warsaw University. Paweł worked for HBO and At Entertainment Ltd as a producer and director. He directed commercials, music videos and TV programs. He was awarded for Nationale Nederlanden commercial at the Euroshots festival and for his short feature “Dos Sombras” at the RealHeart festival in Toronto. He is also an Eave graduate. “Phnom Penh Lullaby” is his first feature lenght documentary film produced with his production company Parallax.

 

Filmography

1996  “D.K” 

1997  “Zosia”

2000  “Breaking Through” 

2005  “Dos Sombras” 

2010  “Phnom Penh Lullaby”

 

 

 

 

 

Jody Kramer, Don't Tell Santa You're Jewish!

Jody Kramer is an old school, pen-on-paper animator living in Vancouver, BC. Since completing her degree in animation at Emily Carr in 2006, she has made four short films that have screened at film festivals around the world, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Ottawa International Animation Festival, and the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival. She has recently collaborated with director Lisa Jackson to produce The Visit, a short animated film produced by the National Film Board and the APTN television network.  Jody worked with the 100 Mile Diet Society to make Home Is Where The Food Is, a cartoon promoting local eating. “Don't Tell Santa You're Jewish!” has been screened in Anchorage, Vancouver, Detroit, and most recently at the 2011 Annecy International Animation festival.  

 

Director Statement

Growing up, I distinctly remember my mother and my grandmother saying “We're proud of being Jewish, but there's no need to advertise.”  I learned to be a “closet Jew,” and this film represents a public statement of my own identity.  This film touches on the very subtle sense of difference that we feel when we stumble off of the mainstream path.  Christmastime can be oppressive for anyone, but for Jews it's a time where we have to explain ourselves.  This film was inspired when a friend asked me to contribute to a Christmas-themed comic strip compilation.  I was told that I could submit material based on “Hannukah, Kwanza or whatever.”  This film is my response to that invitation.  Hannukah has absolutely nothing in common with Christmas, and I wanted to make a story about a being a Jew at Christmastime.

 
 
 
 
 

Stanley Kubrick, Spartacus

Stanley Kubrick was born in New York, and was considered intelligent despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father Jack (a physician) sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle Martin Perveler. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school, there seemed to be little change in his attitude or his results. Hoping to find something to interest his son, Jack introduced Stanley to chess, with the desired result. Kubrick took to the game passionately, and quickly became a skilled player. Chess would become an important device for Kubrick in later years, often as a tool for dealing with recalcitrant actors, but also as an artistic motif in his films.

 

Jack Kubrick's decision to give his son a camera for his thirteenth birthday would be an even wiser move: Kubrick became an avid photographer, and would often make trips around New York taking photographs which he would develop in a friend's darkroom. After selling an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine, Kubrick began to associate with their staff photographers, and at the age of seventeen was offered a job as an apprentice photographer.

 

In the next few years, Kubrick had regular assignments for "Look", and would become a voracious movie-goer. Together with friend Alexander Singer, Kubrick planned a move into film, and in 1950 sank his savings into making the documentary Day of the Fight (1951). This was followed by several short commissioned documentaries (Flying Padre: An RKO-Pathe Screenliner (1951), and The Seafarers (1953)), but by attracting investors and hustling chess games in Central Park, Kubrick was able to make Fear and Desire (1953) in California.

 

Filming this movie was not a happy experience; Kubrick's marriage to high school sweetheart Toba Metz did not survive the shooting. Despite mixed reviews for the film itself, Kubrick received good notices for his obvious directorial talents. Kubrick's next two films Killer's Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956) brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and in 1957 he directed Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas later called upon Kubrick to take over the production of Spartacus (1960), by some accounts hoping that Kubrick would be daunted by the scale of the project and would thus be accommodating. This was not the case, however: Kubrick took charge of the project, imposing his ideas and standards on the film. Many crew members were upset by his style: cinematographer Russell Metty complained to producers that Kubrick was taking over his job. Kubrick's response was to tell him to sit there and do nothing. Metty complied, and ironically was awarded the Academy Award for his cinematography.

 

Kubrick's next project was to direct Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), but negotiations broke down and Brando himself ended up directing the film himself. Disenchanted with Hollywood and after another failed marriage, Kubrick moved permanently to England, from where he would make all of his subsequent films. Despite having obtained a pilot's license, Kubrick was rumored to be afraid of flying. 

Kubrick's first UK film was Lolita (1962), which was carefully constructed and guided so as to not offend the censorship boards which at the time had the power to severely damage the commercial success of a film. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) was a big risk for Kubrick; before this, "nuclear" was not considered a subject for comedy. Originally written as a drama, Kubrick decided that too many of the ideas he had written were just too funny to be taken seriously. The film's critical and commercial success allowed Kubrick the financial and artistic freedom to work on any project he desired. Around this time, Kubrick's focus diversified and he would always have several projects in various stages of development: "Blue Moon" (a story about Hollywood's first pornographic feature film), "Napoleon" (an epic historical biography, abandoned after studio losses on similar projects), "Wartime Lies" (based on the novel by Louis Begley), and "Rhapsody" (a psycho-sexual thriller).

 

The next film he completed was a collaboration with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is hailed by many as the best film ever made; an instant cult favorite, it has set the standard and tone for many science fiction films that followed. Kubrick followed this with A Clockwork Orange (1971), which rivaled Lolita (1962) for the controversy it generated - this time not only for its portrayal of sex, but also of violence. Barry Lyndon (1975) would prove a turning point in both his professional and private lives. His unrelenting demands of commitment and perfection of cast and crew had by now become legendary. Actors would be required to perform dozens of takes with no breaks. Filming a story in Ireland involving military, Kubrick received reports that the IRA had declared him a possible target. Production was promptly moved out of the country, and Kubrick's desire for privacy and security resulted in him being considered a recluse ever since.

 

Having turned down directing a sequel to The Exorcist (1973), Kubrick made his own horror film: The Shining (1980). Again, rumors circulated of demands made upon actors and crew. Stephen King (whose novel the film was based upon) reportedly didn't like Kubrick's adaptation (indeed, he would later write his own screenplay which was filmed as "The Shining" (1997).)

 

Kubrick's subsequent work has been well spaced: it was seven years before Full Metal Jacket (1987) was released. By this time, Kubrick was married with children and had extensively remodeled his house. Seen by one critic as the dark side to the humanist story of Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987) continued Kubrick's legacy of solid critical acclaim, and profit at the box office.

 

In the 1990s, Kubrick began an on-again/off-again collaboration with Brian Aldiss on a new science fiction film called "Artificial Intelligence (AI)", but progress was very slow, and was backgrounded until special effects technology was up to the standard the Kubrick wanted.

 

Kubrick returned to his in-development projects, but encountered a number of problems: "Napoleon" was completely dead, and "Wartime Lies" (now called "The Aryan Papers") was abandoned when Steven Spielberg announced he would direct Schindler's List (1993), which covered much of the same material.

 

While pre-production work on "AI" crawled along, Kubrick combined "Rhapsody" and "Blue Movie" and officially announced his next project as Eyes Wide Shut (1999), starring the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. After two years of production under unprecedented security and privacy, the film was released to a typically polarized critical and public reception; Kubrick claimed it was his best film to date.

 

Special effects technology had matured rapidly in the meantime, and Kubrick immediately began active work on A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), but tragically suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep on March 7th, 1999.

 

After Kubrick's death, Spielberg revealed that the two of them were friends that frequently communicated discretely about the art of filmmaking; both had a large degree of mutual respect for each other's work. "AI" was frequently discussed; Kubrick even suggested that Spielberg should direct it as it was more his type of project. Based on this relationship, Spielberg took over as the film's director and completed the last Kubrick project.

 
 
 
 

Michel Leclerc, The Names of Love

MICHEL LECLERC wrote and directed several short films from 1991 to 2002, including LE POTEAU ROSE (2002), screened at several international film festivals and winner of the Special Mention of the Jury at the 2002 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. He wrote and directed his debut feature J’INVENTE RIEN in 2006, followed by THE NAMES OF LOVE (2007), co-written by Baya Kasmi. Soon to be released in the U.S., THE NAMES OF LOVE opened the 2010 Cannes Critics Week and won two Cesar Awards (Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress for Sara Forestier). Michel Leclerc is currently working on TeLe-GAUCHO (2012), a film also co-written by Baya Kasmi, starring Emmanuelle Beart. He has also co-written LA TeTE DE MAMAN (2007), a film directed by Carine Tardieu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Levy, Grandpa Looked Like William Powell 

David B. Levy, an award-winning animation director, has directed Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues and Blue's Room, the Sesame Workshop's Pinky Dinky Doo, Cartoon Network's Adult Swim series, Assy McGee, dozens of shorts for PBS Kids' The Electric Company and Sesame Workshop's Word on the Street’s Ttunes podcast, pilots for Fox Broadcasting Company, Playhouse Disney, and Nat Geo Kids. In addition to his industry directing experience, Levy is an animation and development script writer engaged by major media companies such as Garan, Inc., and Classic Media to create animated projects based on existing properties. In 2007, Levy signed a development deal with The Disney Channel for his preschool series creation Fiona Finds Out.

As an independent filmmaker, Levy is the creator of many successful animated shorts, including Good Morning, a collaboration with Robert M. Charde, that was a finalist in over sixteen16 international animation festivals (including The Hiroshima Int. Animation Festival and The New York Int. Children's Film Festival).  In February 2009, he completed another short with Charde, Owl and Rabbit Play Checkers. Levy has lectured and taught at Parsons School of Design, The School of Visual Arts, New York University, The Rhode Island School of Design, and Pratt University, and is president of the New York chapter of ASIFA (Association International du Film d' Animation).

 

Levy's first book, the successful Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive (Allworth Press, 2006), was the first industry guide for animation artists working in North America. This text was followed by Animation Development: From Pitch to Production (Allworth Press, 2009), which painted the process by which animated shows are created, pitched, sold, and produced.  He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

 

Director's Statement

Unfortunately the nature of independent animation (as opposed to the act of making an individual painting) can nudge one away from the personal in favor of the commercial because why go through all those hours, days, weeks, months (even years) of work to make an indie animated short if it doesn't have a commercial value? But, I have learned (the hard way) that seeking approval in an indie film (as a reason for making it) is the kiss of death. It won't likely lead to a great film or even a good one. We animation artists spend enough time working with traditional, typical, and limited narrative structures in our every day industry work. A personal film can be so much more. 

 

Production Notes

"Grandpa Looked Like William Powell," is my first 100% personal work, delving into my family's history for its subject. Most films of this nature are usually about family members caught up in big events (like a war or the Holocaust), but not my film, which is simply a study of my connection to a hard-to-know grandfather. 

 

I had the idea to make a personal film about my grandfather some two years ago.  When finally embarking on the production, the first thing I did was jot down memories of a certain time in my life that I wanted to recreate. Next, I recorded myself reading the notes in no particular order. I gave myself permission to ad-lib here and there to keep it loose and fresh. The notes were not so much a script as they were talking points. At the end of one day, I had my first rough assembly of the track, which came to about five minutes, and I gave myself permission to further shift around audio as I worked. 

 

My philosophy in making this film was to try to let the film tell me what to do. Usually that's something that happens as you work on a film for a while, and suddenly it feels as if the film begins to give you instructions on what to do. But I wanted to see if I could get to that state of mind from the beginning. The key for me was to work in a way I hadn't worked before, allowing the self-interview snippets to be a sort of audio storyboard. I was able to animate about 20 seconds a day on the film, which is so fast (for animation) that it felt like the film was spooling out in real time. 

 

The thing I like least about animation is how non-spontaneous the process can be. Typical animation requires lots of planning and process, where a crew or individual follow a pipeline from script, boards, designs, animation, edit, sound, and post. But, all too often the careful planning sucks out any chance of life the animation might have had. When I started to animate any given scene I didn't have a full plan of what I was going to do. I just let it happen as I animated and, the loose (but controlled) structure of the film allowed for experimentation in tone changes and narrative flow.

 
 
 
 

Dani Levy, Life is Too Long

Dani Levy was born in Basel in 1957 and has lived in Berlin since 1980. He performed on stage in Basel (1977-79) and in Berlin (1980-83) before he made his debut as a director with SAME TO YOU (1986) for which he soon afterwards received the Best Film Award at the Vevey Comedy Festival. He was honored with additional awards for his 1988 film ROBBY KALLE PAUL (Audience Award at the 1989 Max-Ophüls Festival) and for I WAS ON MARS (FIPRESCI Award for Best Film in San Sebastian), which he had finished in 1991. 

 

His short film OHNE MICH (1993) earned him the Best Director Award from Hypobank at the Munich Film Festival. It was in the next year that Dani Levy joined up with Stefan Arndt, Wolfgang Becker and Tom Tykwer to found the production company X Filme Creative Pool. STILLE NACHT, which was X Filme's very first project, ran in the International Competition at the Berlin Film Festival. 

 

In 1997, Levy directed the thriller MESCHUGGE, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and won both the Bavarian Film Prize and the prize for Best Cinematography in 1999. That same year, Levy shot THE SECRET in Iceland and Munich, the first 360° film for the "Autostadt" (Automotive theme city) of Wolfsburg. In the spring of 2001, Levy shot his first video clip. The clip, "Adriano - Letzte Warnung", was for the band Brothers Keepers, which is a collective of 14 Afro-German artists. In the next year, the family drama I'M THE FATHER followed. For a short period in the summer of 2004 Dani Levy returned to the theater, staging "Freie Sicht aufs Mittelmeer" for the Theater Basel, which premiered in September of 2004 and recorded for television in 2005. 

 

For his turbulent comedy GO FOR ZUCKER!, Dani Levy was the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2005 German Film Prize in the categories Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Film, as well as the Ernst-Lubitsch-Prize. 

In 2007 My Fuehrer received the Freedom of Expression Award on the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival as well the Main Prize at Festival for European Film Smiles in Mladá Boleslav, Prague. 

 

In 2008 Dani Levy shot JOSHUA as writer, director and actor - a short film for the compilation movie GERMANY 09 - 13 SHORT FILMS ABOUT THE STATE OF THE NATION, shown at the Berlinale in February 2009. 

 

By the end of 2009 Dani Levy wrote and directed his latest feature - the tragic-comedy "Life is too long" - which has been released in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in August 2010.

 

Filmography (Screenplay & Director) 

2010 Life is too long (screenplay, director) 

2008 Joshua (screenplay, director, actor) 

2007 My Fuehrer, The Truly Truest Truth 

About Adolf Hitler (screenplay, director) 

2005 Go For Zucker! (screenplay, director) 

2002 I'm the Father (screenplay, director) 

2001 Adriano - Letzte Warnung (Music video, director) 

1999 The Secret (short film, director) 

1997 Meschugge (screenplay, director, actor) 

1995 Stille Nacht (screenplay, director, actor) 

1993 Ohne Mich (screenplay, director, actor) 

1991 I Was on Mars screenplay (director, actor) 

1988 Robby Kalle Paul (screenplay, director, actor) 

1986 Same to You (screenplay, director, actor)

 
 
 
 

Raymond Ley, Eichmann's End: Love, Betrayal, Death

Born 16 October 1958 in Kassel, Germany

-1979 – 1987 College of Visual Arts, Kassel – major focus television and film – final project: 90-minute movie

- since 1982 – moviemaker, co-founder of the Filmladen Kassel

- since 1984 – various movie projects, funded by the Film Subsidy Funds of Hesse, Hamburg, and Schleswig-Holstein.

- since 1991 – freelance director and author for ZDF, ARD, MDT, 3sat, NDR, etc. 

 

Selected Filmography

 

1998

- Ein Hundehasser auf Talkshow-Tour (A Dog-Hater on the Talkshow Circuit)

 

1999/2000

- Der Autotempel (The Automobile Palace)

- Politik ist eine Hure (Politics is a Whore)

- Beate Uhse - eine deutsche Karriere (Beate Uhse – a German Career)

 

2001

- Geliebter Müll! Vom Mann, der nichts wegwerfen konnte (Beloved Garbage! About a Man who couldn’t throw anything away)

- Männer sterben nie! (Men Never Die!)

 

2001/2

- "Ihr seid nur Tiere!" Die Geiseln von Jolo ("You’re just a Bunch of Animals!" - The Hostages of Jolo)

- Roland B. Schill – Nahaufnahme eines politischen Phänomens (Roland B. Schill – Close-up of a Political Phenomenon)

 

2003

- Aus Liebe zu Deutschland - eine Spendenaffäre (For the Love of Germany – A Bribery Scandal)

- Die Jahre, wie sie waren – Die Fünfziger (The Way it Was – the Fifties)

 

2004

- Das Leben der Eva Maria Mariotti (The Life of Eva Maria Mariotti)

- Letzte Zuflucht Männerwohnheim (Last Refuge Men’s Hostel)

 

2005

- Die Nacht der großen Flut (The Night of the Great Flood)

- Helm ab zum Jubiläum - 50 Jahre Bundeswehr (Helmets off for Prayer – 50th Anniversary of the German Army)

 

2006/2007

- Helmut Schmidt im Gespräch (A Conversation with Helmut Schmidt)

- Nanjing 1937, Tagebuch eines Massakers (Nanjing 1937, Diary of a Massacre – The Story of John Rabe)

 

2007/2008

- Eschede Zug 884 (Train 884 – Eschede)

 

 

Prizes/Nominations/Scholarships

 

1979-1987

Scholarship from the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung for studies in film and television

 

1992

Silver Grimme-Award for the televison satire magazine "KAOS" on 3sat 

- contributing author from 1991 to 1995

 

1994

National award from the German Historical Preservation Office for the MDR-film "Leipziger Bahnhof" (Leipzig Central Station)

 

2003

Nomination for the Ernst Schneider Award for „Aus Liebe zu Deutschland – eine Spendenaffäre“ (For the Love of Germany – A Bribery Scandal)

 

2005

Hamburg Producers’ Award für "Die Nacht der großen Flut" (The Night of the Great Flood)

 

2006

Nomination for the "Golden Prometheus" for Journalist of the Year

 

2006

German Camera Award for "Die Nacht der großen Flut" (The Night of the Great Flood)

 

2006

German Television Award for "Die Nacht der großen Flut" (The Night of the Great Flood)

 

2006/2008

Visiting professor at the DFFB, Hamburg Media School, Kassel College of the Arts and, at the invitation of the Goethe-Institut, at the Universities of Nanjing and Beijing

 
 
 
 
 

Pawel Lozinski, Inventory

PAWEL LOZINSKI- director, scriptwriter and producer of documentary and fiction films born in 1965 in Warsaw. He earned his degree from the Film Directing Department of the Polish National Film School in Łódź. He has won prestigious awards at festivals in Bornholm, Paris, Leipzig and Krakow. His documentary films include Birthplace (1992), The Way It Is (1999), Sisters (1999), Between the Doors (2004), The Exile (2005), Kitty, Kitty (2008)  and the newest one Inventory (2010). His film Chemo (2009) has won PRIX EUROPA for Best Television Documentary Programme of the Year 2009, The MDR Film Prize (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk) for an excellent Eastern European documentary film 2009 and brought him a title of the Best Director at One World Human Rights Watch Film Festival in Prague.

 

Filmography

2010 Inventory

2009 Chemo

2008 Kitty, kitty

2007 Jacek Hugo-Bader, corespondent from Poland 

2004 Between the doors 

 

Director’s Statement

When I heard that the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw is being under the process of inventory and each gravestone, one by one is patiently categorized I felt that this might be a subject for a film. But it was only when I saw this exceptional place overgrown by the woods I understood that I have to do this film. Here the time stopped many years ago and only three characters working on the inventory are bringing life into this place by trying to communicate with the death. When they succeed in reading out the name sculptured at the gravestone it is just as if they were bringing the person once again to life – if just for a moment. 

 
 
 
 
 

Mathias Mangin, Next Year in Bombay

Mathias Mangin was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and grew up in Paris. He graduated in finance from Edhec Business School, and later studied photography in Sao Paulo and filmmaking in New York. His short fiction film The Chance was selected in festivals in Paris and Toronto. He also directed Paris, Adeus, a short video art piece showed during the “Year of France in Brazil” and on TV Cultura. Mathias is actually part of a screenwriting workshop at the Fémis School of Cinéma in Paris. 

 

DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT

 

If our film was a song, it could start like Josephine Baker’s hit: “J’ai deux amours, mon pays et … Bombay” (“I have two loves, my country and … Bombay”). How can someone cultivate a multiple identity without sacrificing one of his or her culture? In early 2006, we could have never imagined that this question – a central one in both of our lives – would come up under the form of a small and unknown Jewish community, lost in India for 2000 years and never persecuted. One of us is French-Brazilian from Lebanese origins (Mathias), the other is a French Jew with Egyptian and Polish roots (Jonas). As we were traveling in India in the summer 2006, we ran almost accidentally into the Bene Israel community in Bombay. The encounter was short, no longer than a Shabbat service in a superb, light blue synagogue, with a dozen of Indian Jews. Back in New York where we were both studying, the idea of doing a documentary on this community became obvious if not mandatory. We had two very clear things in mind: first, we wanted to document this part of the Jewish Diaspora, a community that is both fascinating and disappearing (they are only 4000 left in India); we also wanted to explore some of our core questions in a wonderfully rich environment. The history of the Bene Israel raises new questions about the Jewish identity and Zionism, and more generally about conflicts related to multiple identities. Historians have commonly accepted that the Bene Israel is the only Jewish community that was never discriminated against, and yet most of them moved to the newly created Jewish state in the 1950’s. After having peacefully lived in India for 2000 years, what was making them go? What does it say about someone’s relation to his/her land of origin (or even what one thinks as is his/her land of origin)? Moreover, the attachment that the few thousand Bene Israel remaining in India have for their land of adoption is really moving. Through their syncretic culture – a blend of ancient Judaism, Hinduism and Islam – they have appeared to us as wonderful incarnation of India’s multiculturalism. Finally, in a century that will undoubtedly see growing migration and culture mixing, we want our film to be a poetic interrogation on people’s plural identity and sense of belonging.

  
 
 
 
 

Ibtisam Mara'ana, 77 Steps

Ibtisam was born in 1975 in Faradis, a Muslim, Arab, working class village in the north of Israel.  At the age of 18 Ibtisam was accepted to film school where she began to create without previously ever having seen a film in a cinema. She immediately began working with the themes Ibtisam Films is still exploring today

Her first commercial release, Paradise Lost, is considered to be the first film to be made from the perspective of a Palestinian woman.

Selected Filmography

 

Lecturer at Bezalel - Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem

Director and Producer for the documentary 77 Steps, 2010

Director and Scriptwriter for the documentary Lady Kul El Arab, 2008 

 

Prizes:

    * Special Jury Award at IDFA Amsterdam, 2008

    * Best Director Award -New Delhi International Women Film Festival, 2008

    * First Award -Zagreb Int'l Doc Film Festival

    * First Award - Suriname Int'l Doc Festival Italy 2008

    * GRAND PRIX – Mediterranean Film Festival – Bosnia, 2009

    * Prize Mediterranean section –Palermo, Italy, 2009

   

 

Director and Scriptwriter for the documentary Three Times Divorced, 2007

 

Prizes

* Winner of the BEST Documentary Award – DocAviv Int’l Film Festival, 2007

* Silver Award - Fippa- Biarritz International Film Festival, France, 2008

   

 

Director and Scriptwriter for the documentary Badal, 2006

 

Prizes

* won "in the Sprit of Freedom Award" at the Jerusalem Int’l Film Festival

* BEST Documentary Award in HotDocs, Canada Int’l Doc Film Festival

 

Director and Scriptwriter for the documentary Al-Jiser - The Bridge, 2004

 

Director and Scriptwriter for the documentary Paradise Lost, 2003

 

Prizes

* Best Script Award for co-productions at the DocAviv Int’l Festival, 2003

* Emerging Talent Award & Best Cinematography Award – DocAviv Int’l Film Festival, 2003

* Best Documentary Award – Rehovot Int’l Women’s Film Festival, Israel, 2003.

 

 

 

Andreas Morrath, The Passion According to the Polish Community of Pruchnik

Born in Salzburg, Austria in 1968. Studied photography in Vienna and multi-media art in Salzburg. As a freelance photographer and filmmaker he publishes photo books and creates independent films. His documentaries have received awards at international festivals such as Chicago or Karlovy Vary. His photo albums were praised by people like Richard Avedon or Ryszard Kapuscinsky. 

 

Filmography

THE PASSION ACCORDING TO THE POLISH COMMUNITY OF PRUCHNIK (Doc, 30 min)

VIEWS OF A RETIRED NIGHT PORTER 2006 (Doc, 38 min)

THIS AIN'T NO HEARTLAND 2004 (Doc, 105 min) 

THE SILENCE OF GREEN 2002 (Doc, 48 min) 

POROEROTUS, THE REINDEER SELECTION 1999 (Doc, 45 min)

CLEARANCE 1998 (Short, 17 min)

 

 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

 

At the beginning of most of my films there is the irrational, something I don't understand. The starting point of this film was the question why the residents of a small town in Poland would take pleasure in the annual excessive lynching of an oversized Judas puppet. The scenes of the agitated mob recall harrowing news images that have been imprinted in our collective memory ever since Somalia or Iraq.

 

The mood of the film oscillates between playful and serious. Don’t the four dark figures at the beginning with their infantile jokes resemble children rather than grown-ups? And the children that so eagerly and violently beat on the puppet - are they merely innocently at play?

The guarding of the grave of Jesus until resurrection at the end of the film is tightly connected to the preceding events. Obviously the one cannot exist without the other: we need to destroy the bogeyman Judas first, in order to augment our respect and love for Jesus. I am not sure anti-Semitism is the main problem here. Most villagers probably have other motives to participate. I think a far more universal logic is responsible for the unfolding events: hypocrisy and the thinking in stereotypes. Maybe this is the most disturbing aspect of this story.

 
 
 
 
 

Murad Nassar, Wajeh

Wajeh is not a leader and he doesn't belong to any political party, he is not a revolutionary kind of person. He is only a human being... yes a human being who is seeking for a better life, trying to help everyone and painting a smile on their faces.  We interviewed him at Qalandya, an Israeli military Checkpoint, which located between Ramallah and Jerusalem. I believe that he represents a vivid example of peace and secure coexistence side by side with Israelis.

It is not about planting false dreams to harvest illusions, Indeed Wajeh’s story contains many facts as which he assures my speech.

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Guy Nattiv, Mabul (The Flood)

Guy Nattiv was born in 1973 in Tel Aviv, Israel, where he currently resides.

He graduated from the film & television department of the «Camera Obscura» School of Arts, Tel Aviv in 2002.

In less than five years of film making he has completed two feature films and three shorts. His films, MABUL (short), Strangers & Offside (co-written & co-directed with Erez Tadmor) have received over 20 awards at international film festivals including The Crystal Bear at Berlin and Best Short at Sundance.

His debut film, Strangers (co-written & co-directed with Erez Tadmor), has won international acclaim and participated in the 2008 official selection competition at Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca and others.

Guy’s second feature, MABUL won Best Film at the Haifa International Film Festival and an Israeli Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. It is set to be released in early 2011. 

He is currently preparing his third feature Son of God (with co-director Erez Tadmor) to be shot in Poland in 2011.

 

Filmography – Director

STRANGERS - 7 min (2002)

Co-directed, written and produced with Erez Tadmor

MABUL - (The Flood) 28 min (2002)

Written by Noa Berman-Herzberg 

OFFSIDE - 5 min (2006) 

Co-directed and written with Erez Tadmor

STRANGERS - feature, 85 min (2007) 

Co- directed and written with Erez Tadmor

MABUL - feature, 101 min (2010) 

Co-written with Noa Berman-Herzberg and directed by Guy Nattiv

 

Director’s Statement

MABUL is a project that has been brewing for 9 years, ever since my 2002 short film by the same name. The short film dealt with the relationship between two brothers; one of them a little strange and dreamy, the other approaching his Bar Mitzvah. The feature film deals with four characters in a family falling apart. A family which stands to be dismantled but is ‘saved’ with the arrival of their autistic son who enables them to communicate for the first time and maybe even to forgive themselves and each other.

 

Relationships are something that you understand more and more as you get older, but my real intent in creating MABUL was to understand what parents of an autistic child go through when they discover their son is autistic or moreover, how they cope, or fail to cope, with such a complex relationship.

 

I was not personally familiar with autism. None of my family members suffer from autism and until writing the script, I had never met a family with an autistic child. In order to write and direct an accurate film dealing with the subject and so as not to make embarrassing mistakes, we carried out extensive research. This included meetings with low-functioning autistic teenagers and their families. We came to understand what autism is, what it means, we learned about the subject and introduced our talented and sensitive cast to families who had been touched by autism and disbanded in the midst of such a complicated, fragile and difficult situation.

 

The lengthy research period (almost 2 years) exposed us to an entirely new world which most of us are unaware of. It connected all of us to the script which continued to evolve up until the first day of shooting. We arrived at that day totally prepared, each bringing his own viewpoint and charges. 

 

In creating MABUL I needed to connect to the period of my own adolescence from the age of 13. It seems that the complex processes at the time of adolescence can only be apprehended with twenty years of hindsight. When a mature mind is trapped in the body of an 11-year-old, the consequences are far more dramatic in the proceeding dissection. 

 

MABUL signifies another phase in my creativity and the acceptance of an unsolved period of my own adolescence. As with every work, this project comes from a personal place.

 

 

PRODUCTION NOTES 

 

The making of MABUL 

An interview with Writer/Director Guy Nattiv and Writer Noa Berman-Herzberg 

1- Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration for the film? 

We have two major sources of inspiration: 

First of all, MABUL is based on our short movie by the same name (MABUL, 27 min., 2001, winning of the Crystal Bear award in Berlinale,2002 ). The “beating heart” of the short, as well as the feature, is the relationship between two brothers – one is on the verge of maturity (Bar Mitzvah ceremony) and the other is trapped in eternal childhood. The switch of roles between them is one of our «big themes». 

Secondly, we have the biblical «Tale of Noah» that our story is constantly connecting and disconnecting from. MABUL contains many of the original story ingredients for this tale, but it reverses their meaning and morals; our righteous man is autistic, our animals are worms and ants, our boat is a dangerous trap instead of a rescue and our sinners aren’t punished, but get a chance for forgiveness. Our family is indeed trapped on a rickety boat, floating on stormy waters, but it is saved only after it nearly drowns. 

2- We understand that there was an intense research period. Can you tell us a bit about this process? 

Noa: When I first started to develop the character of Tomer for our short movie - I met a psychotherapist who specializes in autism in children and teenagers. From her I learned about the wide spectrum of autism and about the regular and irregular behaviors within this spectrum, and realized that although there are many similarities and mutual patterns of behavior – each autistic person is an individual. Like any other individual – he has a unique mixture of traits and qualities, abilities and disabilities, weaknesses and strengths. During the long years that MABUL has been a part of my life - I’ve constantly searched for the delicate balance between the personal and the «clinical» characteristics of Tomer. In order to create an authentic character I’ve read articles and books, met with parents of autistic children and visited, together with Guy, special homes for autistic teenagers. When we were working on our feature screenplay – the internet forums and blogs of parents of autistic children – became an enlightening, sometimes overwhelming, source of information. 

3- What were you like at 13? Is there anything similar between you and Yoni? 

Guy: There are certainly similarities between Yoni and me. I was the shortest kid in class, I had a squeaky voice, and I hadn’t matured, physically nor emotionally. My Bar Mitzvah celebration, which I reluctantly had, symbolized my lack of maturity, quite the opposite of its actual meaning. Only when I reached 17 did I start to close the gap. When I saw Yoav as Yoni on set, it was like going back in time, but with a different perspective. Quite therapeutic... 

4- What does MABUL say about Israeli society? The state of the family unit? 

Guy/Noa: The Israeli society in general and the family unit in particular is often characterized as «warm» and «giving». It consists of sharing, involvement and responding to each other constantly, often crossing the lines between private and public, between «I» and «We». We’re a verbal society – people talk a lot and express their thoughts and feelings on a daily basis. The Roshko family stands out as the total opposite – they hardly communicate and therefore are somewhat autistic, not only within their own world, but also in relation to the community they live in. They are breaking the “myth” and thus – allow us to question who we really are. The Roshko’s give us an opportunity to examine the relationship between the community and its outsiders in a place where «togetherness» is a cherished value. And at the same time – they enable their «ark» to be transformed to any place in the world, thus their own private drama becomes a universal story. 

 

5- We understand that Michael spent quite a bit of time “getting into character” -- meeting people with autism and so on. Can you please tell us about this. 

Guy: Michael took Tomer’s part very seriously. He visited an autistic children’s institution twice a week, getting to know their daily routine, understanding their perception of life and of course the physical manifestations of their autism. There was a young boy Michael strongly connected with, who was his main inspiration for Tomer. It is his gestures that Michael finally chose and literally incorporated. He kept in character for very long periods of time, maintaining an autistic state of mind, till it seemed to become natural to him. 

6- Tell us why you decided to work with Philippe Lavalette. What did he bring to the film? 

Guy: I met with about 20 wonderful Canadian DOPs, who all did great work. I was introduced to Philippe by his daughter, a well-known Quebec filmmaker, at the Taipei film festival. He was her DOP. I was amazed to discover his sensitive handheld camerawork. His intelligent, accurate photography for this low budget film (Le Ring) seemed so great and impressive. Philip managed to convey the story and pain of the characters through his lens, and after seeing what he was capable of I had no doubt he was the one I needed for MABUL. When we met half a year later to prepare for MABUL, we had such great chemistry, I knew I made the right choice. This was once again proven when we shot the film. A year later, Philip won the Best Cinematography award at the Haifa Film Festival. He is such a pleasure to work with. 

7- Tell us about your experience with Patrick Watson. 

Guy: I admire Patrick. Pure and simple. I knew his work before we met, and the thought of working with him seemed to be a dream. When I saw the Canadian film It’s not me I swear for which he composed the soundtrack, I felt I needed that same kind of soul in my movie, and that anything else would be a compromise. Through our Canadian producer, Ina Fichman, we managed to get in touch with him. We had to wait for his return from a tour in Australia for 3 months but I suppose the outcome proves it was totally worth it. Working together, I got to know his ability to hold the characters’ sorrow within his notes, without losing the melody and flow of music the film needed. His unique choice of instruments and sounds, such as broken glass or a bicycle wheel, as well as a vast collection of instruments from around the world, created MABUL’s sensitive and moving soundtrack.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vera Neubauer, All Done and Dusted

Vera Neubauer is one of the most prolific animators in the UK. She has written numerous scripts, had photo exhibitions and curated festival screenings. Her films have been widely screened internationally in cinemas, galleries and on television and awarded 2 BAFTAs as well as major prizes at film festivals in Stuttgart, Ankara, Gyor, Wilhelmshaven, Dresden, Ankara, Oberhausen, Melbourne, Montreal,  Hamburg and London.

Her retrospectives have been in Bristol, Liverpool, Baden, Rome, Derby, Lleida, Tampere, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Berlin, Volda, Siena and Vienna.

 

Vera Neubauer taught art and filmmaking at Central St. Martin’s School of Art, Royal College of Art, and Goldsmiths. She works as an independent artist and filmmaker in London.

 

Filmography 

 

2010 ALL DONE AND DUSTED

2010 FLY IN THE SKY 

    *Special Mention from Kino Jurie in Oberhausen Short Film Festival

2008 THE LAST CIRCUS

2005 WOOLLY TOWN – WOOLLY HEAD

2002 HOOKED 

2001 WOLLY WOLF 2 BAFTA 

    *Awards for Best Animation and Best Short Film 

1999 LA LUNA

1999 I DANCE 

1997 THE DRAGON AND THE FLY  

1996 WHEEL OF LIFE   SDR TV 

    *Phone in audience prize

1995 THE LADY OF THE LAKE  

    *1st Prize in Stuttgarter Wintertage  

    *1st Prize for the Best Experimental Film in Mediawave Gyor 

    *Audience Prize in Wilhelmshaven

    *3rd Prize The International Festival of Short Film Dresden, 

    *3rd Prize Ankara International Film Festival.

1993 LIVE T.V. 

1990 DON’T BE AFRAID  

    *1st Prize from the youth jury at Oberhausen Film Festival.)

     *1st Prize for Best Short at Melbourne

     *1st Prize for Best Fiction at Montreal International Film Festival.

     *1st Prize in No Budget Film Festival, Hamburg.

1988 PASSING ON  

    *1st Prize for best Film in the Piccadilly Film Festival.

1987 THE MUMMY’S CURSE 

1986 MID AIR  

    *1st Prize for Best Fiction Film at Melbourne Film Festival.

1984 THE WORLD OF CHILDREN

1981 THE DECISION 

1978 ANIMATION FOR LIVE-ACTION  

1976 FATE  

1972/5 VISION ON     

1973/5 PIP AND BESSIE

1972 GENETICS

1972 ANIMATION- ALLEGATION

1971 CANNON FODDER

 
 
 
 
 

Navot Papushado, Rabies

Navot Papushado was born in 1980 in Israel. He is a director, editor and scriptwriter, a graduate of the Film and Television Department at Tel Aviv University. Since graduating he has directed two short films; New Born & Zeitgeist which have been screened at several major festivals worldwide including Cannes, Moscow and Rome. Rabies is Navot’s first feature film.

 

Directors’ Statement

 

We spent most of our childhood and teenage years watching horror films, a habit that we haven’t been able to shake until today. We dedicated so much time to indulging in cinematic nightmares that one day we just asked ourselves: “Why not make one?” Our main influences are those we acknowledge as being the masters: Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, George Romero, Brian De Palma, Joe Dante, Wes Craven, John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper. Later inspiration came from Takashi Miike, Rob Zombie and Quentin Tarantino. 

 

We felt a lot of responsibility rested on our shoulders when making this film. Israel’s film industry doesn’t rely on genre films. The two most typical types of film in Israel are military films (drama based as a pose to action based war films) and family dramas. There’s little room for comedy and no room at all for horror. So when we got the chance to offer something totally new to the local audience, we felt a huge responsibility to get it right and get the genre off to a good start. There is always a fear of failure, of becoming another cautionary tale in the industry.

Kalevet in Hebrew means rabies, a disease which attacks the nervous system. In Rabies a group of innocent characters are put into an intense environment and tested to see whether or not they will become “infected” and, in doing so, lose their humanity. The name of the film is metaphorical. Rabies is a satirical horror film about the intense and harsh difficulties of living in Israel. 

 

The film isn’t intended to educate audiences or preach a message. We wanted to create an entertaining film and if Rabies can make people laugh and feel terrified at the same time, we’ll be as happy as Freddy Kruger in a dream lab.

 
 
 
 
 

Gilles Paquet-Brenner, Sarah's Key 

Gilles Paquet-Brenner is a French director and screenwriter.  His award-winning, critically-acclaimed first feature, PRETTY THINGS (LES JOLIES CHOSES), starring Marion Cotillard, was released in 2001.   He also directed WALLED IN (2009), GOMEZ VS. TAVARES (2007), UV (2007) and PAY OFF (2003).  He is currently working on DARK PLACES, based on the critically-acclaimed New York Times best seller by Gillian Flynn.

 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

 

I wanted to go back to dealing with more serious issues and that’s when I came across Tatiana de Rosnay’s book.  I was dazzled by its captivating plot, and the way the story also explores the gray areas which few films deal with, such as the attitude of the regular people during the Roundup.  Also, it resonated with my own family history.  I’m of Jewish origin and the men in my family were victims of that period.  My grandfather, a German Jewish musician who had settled in France, was denounced by some French people and died shortly after being sent to the camps.  I pay tribute to him through the character of the violinist who has a ring containing poison so he alone can decide when he dies.  My mother told me that story for the first time while I was in pre-production for the film.  Certain things resurfaced.  Obviously I wasn’t around when my grandfather was deported, but I saw how it had affected my grandmother and my mother and her sisters.  The book brought that back to me – the living who have to learn to live with the dead.

 

 

 

 

 

Jonas Parienté, Next Year in Bombay

 Jonas Parienté is a documentary filmmaker. His films explore questions and stories related to migration, identity and urbanization. Jonas studied in Paris (BA in Sociology, summa cum laude) and New York (MFA in Integrated Media Arts) – where he directed his first two short documentaries. In the first one we meet 75 year-old Richard, who has been living for half a century in a young men’s hostel. The next one, Bodies & Soul, is a portrait of his then-neighbor

Joe, whose life incarnates the transformations of the Lower East Side, from the self-destructive punk era to the more gentrified current period. After his first hour-long documentary Next year in Bombay, he directed a webdocumentary for French public TV on Mumbai’s urbanization from the eyes and experience of a rickshaw driver.

 

DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT

 

If our film was a song, it could start like Josephine Baker’s hit: “J’ai deux amours, mon pays et … Bombay” (“I have two loves, my country and … Bombay”). How can someone cultivate a multiple identity without sacrificing one of his or her culture? In early 2006, we could have never imagined that this question – a central one in both of our lives – would come up under the form of a small and unknown Jewish community, lost in India for 2000 years and never persecuted. One of us is French-Brazilian from Lebanese origins (Mathias), the other is a French Jew with Egyptian and Polish roots (Jonas). As we were traveling in India in the summer 2006, we ran almost accidentally into the Bene Israel community in Bombay. The encounter was short, no longer than a Shabbat service in a superb, light blue synagogue, with a dozen of Indian Jews. Back in New York where we were both studying, the idea of doing a documentary on this community became obvious if not mandatory. We had two very clear things in mind: first, we wanted to document this part of the Jewish Diaspora, a community that is both fascinating and disappearing (they are only 4000 left in India); we also wanted to explore some of our core questions in a wonderfully rich environment. The history of the Bene Israel raises new questions about the Jewish identity and Zionism, and more generally about conflicts related to multiple identities. Historians have commonly accepted that the Bene Israel is the only Jewish community that was never discriminated against, and yet most of them moved to the newly created Jewish state in the 1950’s. After having peacefully lived in India for 2000 years, what was making them go? What does it say about someone’s relation to his/her land of origin (or even what one thinks as is his/her land of origin)? Moreover, the attachment that the few thousand Bene Israel remaining in India have for their land of adoption is really moving. Through their syncretic culture – a blend of ancient Judaism, Hinduism and Islam – they have appeared to us as wonderful incarnation of India’s multiculturalism. Finally, in a century that will undoubtedly see growing migration and culture mixing, we want our film to be a poetic interrogation on people’s plural identity and sense of belonging.

  
 
 
 
 

Yoav Potash, Crime After Crime

 Yoav Potash’s work has often addressed issues of race and justice. Yoav recently co-directed the one-hour documentary FOOD STAMPED in collaboration with his wife, nutrition educator Shira Potash. His half-hour documentary LIFE ON THE INSIDE, about the nation’s largest prison for women, began airing on PBS stations in 2007. His 35mm film MINUTE MATRIMONY earned a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival and a Grand Festival Award at the Berkeley Video & Film Festival. CRIMINAL JUSTICE, Yoav’s short on racial profiling, won a documentary competition judged by HBO and The Learning Channel. He collaborated with PBS station KQED to complete his first documentary, FROM THE GROUND UP, about a multicultural group of UC Berkeley students who helped rebuild burned-down African-American churches in Alabama. Yoav has also produced short documentaries and videos for many companies and nonprofits, including: Apple Computer, Neutrogena, Jewish Family and Children’s Services of San Francisco, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The Koret Foundation, and the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. He has taught film courses at the Bay Area Video Coalition and Academy of Art University, and is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where he received the university’s top prize in creative writing. CRIME AFTER CRIME is his first feature-length film. In what may now be seen as an ironic twist, the first job Yoav landed behind a camera was as a legal videographer, filming depositions for ongoing legal disputes.

 

Directors Statement

I am very proud to have the opportunity to tell Debbie Peagler’s story in my first feature-length film. She is, quite simply, a remarkable person who chose to live a positive life despite many very negative circumstances. Initially, I began production of this project simply because of my attraction to the high-stakes storyline and all three main characters: Debbie and her attorneys Joshua and Nadia. Over time, however, working on the film has transformed me into a vocal advocate for all victims of domestic violence, especially those who would otherwise be forgotten and denied justice. My goal is to create a valuable resource in sparking change for battered women in prison, and to help people to better understand and support victims of abuse. In the long term, I intend to direct more films with strong social change components in the years to come, and I hope that any successes of CRIME AFTER CRIME will further enable me to be involved in the creation of more films that have a direct and positive impact on people’s live. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lou Reed, Red Shirley

Lou Reed is an American Master, a playwright, a poet, and a photographer whose photos have been exhibited worldwide. His third photography book, Romanticism, was released in 2009. He is the recipient of the Chevalier Commander of Arts and Letters from the French government and numerous other awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and is a founding member of the legendary Velvet Underground. 

In December of 2006 Lou Reed premiered the live staging of his masterwork Berlin at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York. The performance was filmed by Academy Award nominated director and artist Julian Schnabel. 

 

Reed released his first suite of electronic mediation music, Hudson River Wind Meditations, on the Sounds True label in 2007. In late 2008 Reed released a new album of live electronic music called Lou Reed's Metal Machine Trio: The Creation of The Universe, which inspired two extremely well received performances by the MM3 Trio in New York in April of 2009. The CD is available for sale through his website www.loureed.com.

 

Reed collaborated with artist Lorenzo Mattioti, who created a graphic novel based on Lou’s album, The Raven. He is also completing a book of essays on Chen Tai Chi called The Art Of The Straight Line. Lou Reed co-hosts a weekly radio show on Sirius XM Satellite Radio with friend and distinguished producer Hal Willner called “The New York Shuffle.” 

 

Reed has acted in and composed music for films and currently lives in the city of his heart, New York.

 

RED SHIRLEY is his first film.

 
 
 
 
 

Mike Reiss, Like Father Like Clown

Mike Reiss won four Emmys and a Peabody Award during his eighteen years writing for “The Simpsons”.  In 2006, Reiss received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Animation Writers Caucus.  Reiss co-created the animated series “The Critic” and created Showtime’s hit cartoon “Queer Duck” (about a gay duck).  “Queer Duck” was recently named one of “The 100 Greatest Cartoons of All Time” by the BBC.  “Queer Duck: the Movie” was released to rave reviews in July 2006.  The film won awards in New York, Chicago, Sweden, Germany and Wales.Reiss’s other TV credits include “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show”, “ALF”, and “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson”.   “My Life in Ruins”, a film inspired by his travels to 61 countries, was released in 2009.  Reiss was also co-wrote ‘The Simpsons  Movie” and “Ice Age 3”, with a combined world-wide gross of $1.5 billion

 

His caveman detective story “Cro-Magnon P.I.” won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.  He has published fourteen children’s books, including the best-seller “How Murray Saved Christmas” and the award-winning “Late for School”.  Reiss also composes puzzles for NPR and Games Magazine.

 

As a professional speaker, Reiss has lectured at over one hundred colleges and institutions, on six continents.   His topics include “The Simpsons”, comedy and Judaism, and the sorry state of television.   Reiss is a former president of “The Harvard Lampoon” and editor of “The National Lampoon”.

 

He has been happily married for twenty-three years.  Like most children’s book authors, he has no children.

 

 

 

Scott Rosenfelt, Standing Silent

Scott Rosenfelt is one of Hollywood’s most successful independent producers.  On the strength of such films as Smoke Signals, Home Alone, Mystic Pizza, Teen Wolf and Extremities, Scott has garnered international acclaim and recognition.

 

As director and producer, his documentary, Standing Silent, a recipient of a Sundance Documentary Filmmaker Grant, has been accepted at numerous festivals for later in the year.  Mr. Rosenfelt also recently finished directing the dramatic short film, After the Denim, based on a short story by Raymond Carver which had its World Premiere at the Florida International Film Festival in April, 2011.  Mr. Rosenfelt directed Family Prayers, starring Joe Mantegna, Anne Archer and Paul Reiser, which had its World Premiere at the 1993 Palm Springs International Film Festival and the 1993 Seattle International Film Festival. 

 

Mr. Rosenfelt has written and will be directing and producing the feature film, Bruno Sammartino – The People’s Champion, based on the champion wrestler’s extraordinary life.  He is also writing the screenplay for and will direct and produce Snow White Ladies from the novel by Ann Platz and Rachel Hale.

 

Mr. Rosenfelt recently produced Coming & Going, an independent comedy starring Rhys Darby, Sasha Alexander and Fionnula Flannagan, written and directed by Edoardo Ponti.  He is currently in pre-production on The Road Project, a feature film written and to be directed by David De Leon.

 

Home Alone is one of the highest grossing films of all time, and has generated over $1 billion worldwide.  Smoke Signals was the winner of the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.  Mystic Pizza launched the career of Julia Roberts and went on to critical and commercial success, while Teen Wolf, starring Michael J. Fox, is one of the highest grossing independent films of all time.  Extremities, starring Farrah Fawcett, garnered international, critical and commercial acclaim as well. 

 

Gospel Hill, produced by Mr. Rosenfelt, directed by Giancarlo Esposito and starring Samuel Jackson, Angela Bassett, Danny Glover and Julia Stiles was released in February, 2009.  He executive produced Valley of the Heart’s Delight, written by Miles Murphy, directed by Tim Boxell, and starring Gabriel Mann, Pete Postlethwaite and Bruce McGill, which had its theatrical release in October of 2007.  

 

At ShadowCatcher Entertainment, a company he co-founded in 1994, he produced Smoke Signals and The Book of Stars, as well as executive producing Getting to Know You.  Written by highly acclaimed novelist/poet Sherman Alexie, Smoke Signals was the winner of the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and was distributed by Miramax Films.  The Book of Stars premiered at the 1999 Seattle International Film Festival and starred Mary Stuart Masterson, Jena Malone and Delroy Lindo.  Getting to Know You was in the Dramatic Competition of the 1999 Sundance Film Festival as well as in the International Week of Film Critics at the Venice Film Festival.  Getting to Know You was directed by Lisanne Skyler, written by Lisanne Skyler and Tristine Skyler, and starred Heather Matarazzo, Zach Braff and Bebe Neuwirth, and opened at the Film Forum in June, 2000 to rave reviews.  

 

In 2001, Mr. Rosenfelt produced The Business of Fancydancing, which marked the directorial debut of Sherman Alexie, who also wrote the script.  The film premiered in the American Spectrum section of the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, and was released theatrically in LA and NY in October of 2002.  He was the Executive Producer on Evergreen, written and directed by Enid Zentelis and starring Mary Kay Place, Bruce Davison and Gary Farmer.  Evergreen premiered in competition at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.

 

Mr. Rosenfelt is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.  He is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. 

 

 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

 

As a producer, I have been privileged to be responsible for films that are emotionally satisfying such as "Smoke Signals" and Mystic Pizza", and others that have been commercially successful such as "Home Alone" and "Teen Wolf". 

 

During those years I had great respect for documentary filmmakers, and to felt daunted by their talent and ability to tell a story without everything perfectly scripted and planned the way I was trained.  I never dreamed that it would be an area that I would tackle someday.

 

That was before I met Phil Jacobs.

 

I met Phil through my brother, Bob.  They are both orthodox Jews, longtime residents in Baltimore and part of the community and well respected.  What I didn't know about Phil was not just his crusading work as a journalist to tell the stories of survivors of sexual molestation at the hands of orthodox rabbis, but that he had been raped as a young boy by someone in his congregation.  I learned of these things virtually at the same time.  Phil then introduced me to a survivor that he was doing a story on for the Jewish Times, a weekly newspaper based in Baltimore.  When I met this man, and shook his hand, I felt years of pain, loss, anger...every possible negative emotion possible.  As I looked in his eyes I saw emotional devastation of a kind that I had never experienced.  After he left, I turned to Phil and said, "I don't know how, but I'm going to get the funding and we're going to do a documentary about your work and the survivors' stories."   I don't think Phil believed me!

 

Within six months I had found investors and began the journey of making this horrifying, emotional film.  A film I wish I did not have to make, but one I knew I had to make.  There was no choice.  Along the way we graciously received a grant from the Sundance Documentary Film Program, and after a three-year journey to complete this film, "Standing Silent".  I could not be more proud.

 

I believe the most important thing about the film, besides illuminating Phil Jacobs' extraordinary work as a journalist, is to give a voice to the survivors.  That gives me the most satisfaction.  

 

Making this film has changed the way I look at the world and the work that I do.  I believe this kind of film is what a documentary should really be - illuminate a relatively un-heard of subject, expose it, and give people hope that although they will never get over what happened, that at least they can feel a little bit less despair.

 

If this film helps alleviate that pain by even 1% I'll feel happy.

 

 

 

 

Eitan Sarid, Trip to Jaffa

Eitan Sarid  is 28 years old, born in Haifa' lives in Tel Aviv, and is a student in the Film and Television Department, Tel Aviv University.

 

Filmography:

"The Wankers" 2009 short fiction (director)

"Thailand" 2009 short fiction (producer)

 

Director's Statement

 

My film was created for the "Coffee - Between Reality and Imagination" project, a cinematic collaboration between young Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers. My primary goal was to see Tel-Aviv through the eyes of Palestinians who live only 40 kilometers away in a very different and almost impossible reality. I was re-writing the script again and again through a consistent dialog with the two wonderful actors I was privileged to work with. This dialog was very meaningful to me.  Not only that I was able to explore this delicate issue and learn an important lesson about cinema and life, I had an insightful experience meeting Palestinians who share the same passions and dreams as I do, and most importantly, made two friends for life.

 
 
 
 

Elisabeth Scharang, In Another Lifetime

Elisabeth Scharang lives and works as a cinematographer and radio host in Vienna.

For 13 years, the autodidact has been heading through all genres and continents as a documentary filmmaker. She often takes on the role of camerawoman herself.

The cinema documentary “Octopusalarm,” an unconventional portrait of Alex, an intersexual, had its world premiere at the Berlinale 2005 and was screened at more than 30 international film festivals.

After two successful television films, “In Another Lifetime” is the director’s first feature film.

 

 

 

 

Maurice Schwartz, Tevye

Maurice Schwartz's adaptation of the classic Sholem Aleichem play centers on Khave, Tevye the Dairyman’s daughter, who falls in love with Fedye, the son of a Ukrainian peasant. Her courtship and marriage pit Tevye’s love for his daughter against his deep-seated faith and loyalty to tradition. The clash between tradition and modernity, parental authority and love, customs and enlightenment are foreshadowed by the anti-semitism of the rural community. Several scenes stand out: Khave showing her skeptical father the volume of Gorki given to her by her suitor; Tevye gently teaching Psalms to his grandchildren and reciting the Sabbath prayers; and Tevye mourning the loss of his child to intermarriage. Tevye was filmed at the Underhill Farm just east of Jericho, Long Island. 

Maurice Schwartz also starred in the Yiddish films Uncle Moses, Unfortunate Bride, and Yizkor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tiffany Shlain, Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death and Technology

 Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker, founder of The Webby Awards, cofounder of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences and a Henry Crown Fellow of The Aspen Institute. Tiffany is the only director with two films at Sundance this year. Her films have been selected by over 100 film festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, and Rotterdam, won 20 awards including Audience and Grand Jury Prizes, been translated into 8 languages and been shown at museums including LACMA, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art and the Guggenheim. Her films— a fusion of documentary and narrative and known for their whimsical yet provocative approach unraveling complicated subjects like politics, cultural identity, technology and science—include Life,

Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness, about reproductive rights in America, and The Tribe, an exploration of American Jewish identity through the history of the Barbie doll, which was the first documentary short to become #1 on iTunes. Her short film at Sundance this year, Yelp: With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, about the importance of “unplugging,” was selected for competition for the Guggenheim Museum’s YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video. Her new feature documentary, Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology, was selected to premiere in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance 2011. A celebrated thinker and speaker, she has advised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is on the advisory board of M.I.T.’s Geospatial Lab and presented the 2010 Commencement Address at UC Berkeley.

 

Filmography

Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology (2011)

Yelp: With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (2010)

The Tribe (2006)

Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness (2002)

Less is Moore (2001)

Natural Connection (2001)

Machine Time (2000)

Hunter & Pandora (1992)

Reel Inspiration: Bay Area Women Filmmakers (1992)

The Closet of Dr. Caligari (1991)

 

 

Director's Statement

 

I hope that Connected, will help create a global conversation about what it means to be connected in the 21st century.  I believe that by engaging people to talk about connectedness in their own lives and in the world, the ripple effect of these conversations will have far reaching impact.  Appreciating that this is a huge subject, I employ many tactics (humor, animation, archival and my own personal story) to attempt to untangle what interdependence and connectedness mean in terms of the history of the human species and moving forward. Through this journey, I wield a large magnifying glass to look at some of the absurd and beautiful behaviors of our species and our world. While the core components of humans desire to be "connected," have not changed since we first appeared on this planet, I believe a new zeitgeist is emerging through all these new technologies that are making our world smaller and more intertwined. 

 
 
 

Kirk Simon, Strangers No More

Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman have made over twenty documentaries and in the process have garnered four Academy Award nominations, three Emmys and the DuPont-Columbia Award for Independent Programming. They have received filmmaking grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, and the American Film Institute.

 

Their documentaries have been broadcast nationally on PBS, HBO, and MTV, and screened at festivals around the world including the New York Film Festival, Sundance, New Directors / New Films, London, Berlin, Montreal and St. Petersburg. In addition, they have overseen and filmed dance preservation projects for the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Lincoln Center's Library and Museum of the Performing Arts. 

 

Both Mr. Simon and Ms. Goodman are active voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They have served as consultants to the National Endowment for the Humanities Media Program, on the Documentary Screening Committee for the Academy Awards and as judges for the Emmy Awards and the DuPont-Columbia Broadcast Journalism Award.

 

Filmography

Strangers No More (2010)

A documentary profiling a school in south Tel Aviv, where children from fortyeight different countries and diverse backgrounds come together to learn. The film follows students who share their difficult stories and struggle to acclimate to life in Israel.

 

MASTERCLASS (2010) - HBO

A nine-part series that documents the experience of a small group of emerging

young artists working with a notable mentor. The series encourages young artists

to pursue their dreams and hopes to help fill a void in arts education in America.

With Placido Domingo, Liv Ullmann, Edward Albee, Frank Gehry, Jacques

d’Amboise, Olafur Eliasson, Bill T. Jones, Michael Tilson Thomas and Julian

Schnabel.

 

The Sealed Orders of Liv Ullmann (2009) - HBO

After a lifetime of learning - and two Academy Award nominations – actress Liv

Ullmann comes full circle by mentoring a group of talented teenage drama

students. In the midst of preparing to direct Cate Blanchett in "Streetcar Named

Desire," she takes time out to work with the young actors on the same play.

Together, they surprise and learn from each other, underscoring the importance

of passing experience on from one generation to the next.

 

Locks of Love: The Kindest Cut (2008) - HBO

A film about Locks of Love, an organization that provides hairpieces to financially

disadvantaged children from around the country who have lost their hair from

cancer treatments, alopecia, or other medical conditions. The film tells the stories

of the people who donate their hair and of two children who are being helped by

Locks of Love.

 

 

Rehearsing a Dream (2006) - HBO

Academy Award Nomination: Best Documentary Short Subject

The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts brings together the

country’s most promising high school performing, visual and literary artists for

one transformative week. With Michael Tilson Thomas, Mikhail Baryshnikov,

Vanessa Williams and Jacques d’Amboise.

 

Coming Out Stories (2006) - MTV/Logo

An eight part documentary series portraying the diverse journeys of gays and

lesbians as they experience coming out – including a mayor of a small California

city to his constituency, an identical twin to her sibling and a husband to his wife

of twelve years. “This touching series marks a high point for the network.”

Entertainment Weekly

Strangers No More Press Kit 8

 

Smashed: Toxic Tales of Teens and Alcohol (2004) - HBO

IDA Nomination: Best Documentary

Spirit Award

Parent’s Choice Award

Stories of teenagers and their families whose lives have been brutalized by the

tragic link between drinking and driving. “Haunting…” - New York Times

 

Kindergarten! (2004) - HBO

IDA Nomination: Best Documentary Series

The first-ever real life documentary series for kids, 13 episodes following a year in

the life of one Kindergarten class. “If all parents watched, there would be

wholesale changes in the educational system across America” – Philadelphia

Inquirer

 

The Incredible Human Body (2002) - National Geographic/PBS

National Geographic Special about the world within us. Narrated by Kate

Burton. “Stretches the bounds of the biological documentary” - LA Times

 

No Applause, Just Throw Money (1998) - PBS

Emmy Award: Documentary Editing

New York Emmy Award: Outstanding Informational/Cultural Program

Silver Prize: Leningrad Film Festival

A kaleidoscopic film featuring 101 New York Performers. Premiered at New

Directors/New Films and Sundance film festivals before its national broadcast on

P.B.S. “An exuberant film”- New York Times.

 

Heart of a Child (1997) - HBO

Cable Ace Award: Best Documentary Special

The emotional story of a child in need of a heart and lung transplant and the

desperate search for a donor. “One of the year’s five best… Likely to remain

lodged in some corner of your consciousness for years to come...” - Tom Shales,

Washington Post.

 

27th and Prospect: One Year in the Fight Against Drugs (1997) - HBO

Cable Ace Award nomination: Best Public Affairs Special

Produced for the “Faces of Addiction” series. A portrait of an inner city

neighborhood’s struggle to combat the perils of substance abuse in their

community.

 

The Telephone (1997) - The American Experience/PBS

Chronicles the early history of the telephone. Narrated by Morley Safer and

featuring the voices of Spalding Gray, Frank Whaley, Kurt Vonnegut, and

Julianne Moore.

Strangers No More Press Kit 9

 

Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud (1996) - American

Masters/PBS

Emmy Nomination: Outstanding Cultural/Informational Program

DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton for Independent Programming

A feature length documentary biography of the American innovator. Premiered

at the Sundance Film Festival. “A top notch documentary.” - San Francisco

Chronicle. “Splendid and wittily absorbing…mesmerizing.” - Detroit Free Press.

 

Cairo Unveiled (1992) - National Geographic

Explores the role of women in Egypt through the eyes of one of the country’s

most celebrated belly dancers. Broadcast as the season premiere of the Explorer

series.

 

Backstage at Masterpiece Theatre (1992) - PBS

Emmy Award Nomination: Outstanding Informational/Cultural Program

An hour-long 20th anniversary retrospective chronicling the series’ two decades of

drama through excerpts and interviews with John Hurt, Ben Kingsley, Peggy

Ashcroft, Alistair Cooke and others.

 

Chimps: So Like Us (1990) - HBO

Academy Award Nomination: Best Documentary Short Subject

Emmy Award: Outstanding Informational/Cultural Program

The story of man’s closest living relative, the chimpanzee, through the eyes of

Jane Goodall, the naturalist who has devoted a lifetime to safeguard them. “More

affecting than the big screen’s “Gorillas in the Mist”– Hollywood Reporter.

 

Children’s Storefront (1988) - PBS

Academy Award Nomination: Best Documentary Short Subject

A stirring portrait of an extraordinary educational oasis in Harlem.

 

Isaac In America (1986) - American Masters/PBS

Academy Award Nomination: Best Feature Documentary

Biography of Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer. Screened at the New York

Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival.

 

Light of Many Masks (1981) - Discovery Channel

Balinese culture viewed through its unique masked dance-drama. Premiered on

Channel 4 in the U.K. and the Margaret Mead Film Festival.

 

 

Directors’ Statement

 

It’s hard to film a miracle. Telling the story of the remarkable Bialik- Rogozin School in Tel Aviv -- an extraordinary place where one can experience a sense of humanity so rich and pervasive it often feels impossible -- seemed a tremendous responsibility. Among the 750 refugees and immigrants from forty-eight countries and every known religion, we chose to follow three children who fled their homelands in Darfur, South Africa, and Eritrea. Over the course of fifteen months, we portrayed their struggles to forget the past and rebuild their lives in this rarest of communities, where truly no one is a stranger.

 
 
 
 
 

Alan Snitow, Between Two Worlds

Directors Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman are award-winning documentary filmmakers whose works include “Blacks and Jews,” “Secrets of Silicon Valley,” and “Thirst.” Their films have been featured at the Sundance, Jerusalem, and many Jewish film festivals, and aired on public television’s acclaimed “P.O.V.” and “Independent Lens” series. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA today, and CNN, and has received support from the Ford, Rockefeller, Cummings and MacArthur foundations. Their films have been used by activists and opinion leaders around the world and have been translated into over fifteen languages and broadcast internationally. The ‘New Yorker’ magazine has said “Snitow and Kaufman bring a fair-minded skepticism to everything they film.”

 

Prior to her work as a documentary filmmaker, Kaufman founded and for 13 years was Director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the first and largest independent Jewish film showcase in the world. She has been active in a wide range of human rights, Jewish community, and cultural organizations and has served on a wide range of Boards including the California Council for the Humanities and Amnesty International USA. Kaufman is a graduate of University of California Hastings College of the Law and a member of the California Bar.

 

Prior to his film work, Snitow was producer at the top-rated KTVU-TV News, the Bay Area Fox affiliate, for 12 years. Before that he was the News Director for eight years at the Bay Area’s Pacifica Radio station KPFA-FM, winning the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Gold Award for Best Local Newscast. He has served on a wide range of Boards including the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the Film Arts Foundation, and the California Media Collaborative. He is a graduate of Cornell University and a member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

 
 
 

Michael Wahrmann, Grandmothers

Wahrmann Michael, Director and Screenwriter, was born in 1979 in Montevideo, Uruguay. At the age of six, he emigrated to Israel. During his adolescence, he participated in left wing movements, organizing demonstrations and seminars for peace and the end of the conflict in the Middle East. At 18, he was drafted and was a sailor for three years. In 2000, he started experimenting with photography and literature. In 2001, he participated of the photo exhibit “Testing 123″ in the Hottentot Gallery. The same year, he won a “mention with honors” in the short story competition “La Palabra Limpia” in Uruguay. In 2002, he joined the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, where he discovered a passion for video and film. The first year, he won the “Award for excellence” in his studies. In 2004, he moved to Sao Paulo and received a scholarship to study film at the FAAP University. He graduated in 2007.

In 2009, he founded Sancho Films. At the same year, he won the Incentive Award for Short Film of the São Paulo Cultural Department, to make a documentary about the “Immigrant House” where they take care of illegal immigrants in Sao Paulo. In 2010, Michael participated as a vídeo maker in the 29th São Paulo International Biennale of Arts with his vídeo performance – WIFE.  He is currently producing two new short films, one is a documentary vídeo and another a feature 16mm short film. He is also writing his first feature film and pre-producing two new short films.

 

Selected Filmography

Among his videos and short films as a screenwriter and director, we find:

“The Sofá”, 2003, 2 min, Stop-Motion, Video

“Quem é a Sra. Maria Augusta”, 2005, 10 min. Documentary, Video

“Faixa” 2008, Vídeo, 1 min. Vídeo

 

As Editor:

“Walt Disney Square”, 2011, short, vídeo, by Renata Pinheiro and Sergio Oliveira, in post production.

“Circuito Interno”, 2010, short, 35mm, 13 min. by Julio Martí

“Casa”, 2009, Experimental, 5 min. by Luiz René Guerra for “Fucking Different, São Paulo”

“O Bebê de Eisenstein”, 2007, Vídeo, 15 min. by Paolo Gregori.

 
 
 
 

Britta Wauer, In Heaven Underground: The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery

 Britta Wauer is an award winning director and producer for documentary films. She was born in Berlin in 1974, studied at the Berlin Journalist School and created her first TV documentary in 1995. After working for Spiegel TV in Hamburg for two years, she studied film (directing/ producing) at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). 

Since then, she has directed documentaries focusing mainly on contemporary history, current affairs and biographies. In 2005 she founded her own production company “Britzka Film.“

 

Filmography (selected)

2001 Death Of A Hero, Documentary, ZDF/ARTE, 55 mins, German Television Awards 2001

 

2004 The Rapoports with Sissi Hüetlin, Documentary, ARTE, 60 mins, Grimme Award 2005, MoMA, NYC 2006

 

2005 Berlin - A Square, a Murder & a Famous Communist, Documentary, ZDF/ARTE, 50 mins

 

2008 Gerda’s Silence, Documentary, Zeitsprung Entertainment, 90 min, Audience Award Best Documentary Schwerin, 2009

 

2011 In Heaven, Underground, Documentary, Britzka Film, 90 min, Panorama Audience Award, Best Documentary Berlinale 2011

 

Director’s Statement

It is more than a challenge to fairly handle the fates of more than 115,000 departed souls and their relatives in a film. There is no chance of being comprehensive. A list of famous names, a sequence of lifetime achievements or recounting sad deaths do not make for an interesting film. Yet Weissensee has earned this. The screen should not to be filled with graves, ivy and gravel, but with people telling of the rich lives that were once led in Berlin. For me it’s a matter of personal connections. The idea was one of pursuing some few fates and letting protagonists who were personally connected to the dead tell the tale. People with memories, feelings and thoughts are central. They should play the main role in the film and make plain to the viewer what is precious about Weissensee. Naturally the era of Nazi dictatorship overshadows all other events. But the film does not want to restrict itself to recounting deaths from those years. To reduce the dead of Weissensee to their sad ends is a falsification. Many of those buried there completed unusual things, achieved something special or experience something strange. The film also wants to tell of funny, absurd and thoughtful moments, and of a great love – one without a happy ending.

 
 
 
 

Edyta Wróblewska, The Girl from A Reading Primer

 Born in 1972. Graduated from Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing and Camerimage Film School in Poland. Also graduated from Warsaw School of Economics and French Institute of Management. For several years she has been working for media companies as a trainer and a consultant. From 2004 she has been working as a director of documentary films. Her documentary “PRL de Luxe” was screened and prized at many international film festivals (Cracow, New York, Toronto, London, Sheffield, Nice, Zagreb, Kiev, Bucharest, Guangzhou, Melbourne). 

 

Filmography

2010 – Debut, doc, 21’

2010 – The Girl from a Reading Primer, doc. 28’

2008 – PRL de Luxe, doc. 15’

2007 – Underground Mazowsze Weekly, doc. 22’

2004 – Get Together, doc. 26’

2004 – Silence/Supermarket, doc. 3’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tal Haim Yoffe, Kun 65

 Born 1968 Kibbutz Maoz-Haim

 

Filmography

2010- Kun 65- 24 min. Documentary. Official selection of the Palm Springs international Film Festival.

2009- Clementine- 48 min. Documentary. An honorary mention winner at the 

Jerusalem film festival.

2008- The Green Dumpster Mystery- 50 min. Documentary. Winner of the Yad  Vashem award at the Jerusalem film festival. 

2003 – My Car Got Stolen – 31 min. Documentary. 

1992-2003 – Director of numerous commercials, promos and music videos broadcast by all Israeli TV Channels. Winner of 7 International Promax Awards.

 

Education

1989-1992 –Film and Television studies at  Tel Aviv University.

 

Director’s Statement

When I started this project everyone told me to drop it, it was just after my previous movie "The Green Dumpster Mystery" was released, and the two movies started at exactly the same way, me finding some old stuff at the garbage, the fear was that people might think that I'm trying to duplicate my previous success, but for me it was a great exercise, trying to make a completely different movie using the same opening and the same cinematic language.

Well, I'm very happy that I stuck with this film, it gave me the honor and the privilege to meet Heddy Kun, the artist behind the painting that I found on the street, an amazing woman, a holocaust survivor that went through so many horrifying experiences and still fills that life is beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

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