Director: Julie Cohen The founder of BetterThanFiction Productions, Julie Cohen has directed and produced ten films and won three New York Emmys, including the 2014 award for Best Arts Program. Before starting BetterThanFiction, she was a longtime staff producer for NBC News. She graduated from Colgate and holds master’s degrees from Yale Law School and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she is an adjunct professor. Julie lives in Brooklyn with her husband Paul M. Barrett, senior feature writer for Bloomberg Businessweek and author of four nonfiction books, including Law of the Jungle. ;nbsp
The Lady in Number 6
Director: Malcolm Clarke
Malcolm Clarke is an English film maker. Clarke and fellow producer Nicholas Reed received an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) for the 2013 film The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life.Clarke also won the Oscar in this category at the 61st Academy Awards for You Don’t Have to Die and was nominated in 2002 for Prisoner of Paradise in the documentary feature category.
Hitler’s Children
Director: Chanoch Ze’evi
Chanoch Ze’evi is a director and producer of documentary films for the television and documentary film industries. In fifteen years of filmmaking, Mr. Ze’evi has addressed issues of conflict, reconciliation, and the social and political circumstances that define identity. His films are intended to forge paths and build bridges between opposing groups and cultures.
The Wonders
Director: Avi Nesher
Avi Nesher‘s award winning films have played a major part in Israeli cinema’s rise to prominence during the last ten years. In 2010 Nesher wrote, directed and produced The Matchmaker which was hailed as the best movie of the year by several Israeli film critics. In 2007, Nesher’s Hasodot was hailed as “witty and wise, sensual and emotionally over powering – one of the best Israeli movies in recent years.” In 2005, Nesher directed the highly experimental political documentary Oriental about the Camp David Accords and won the “Spirit of Freedom” award at the Jerusalem Film Festival. “Brilliant and original” raved the Jerusalem Post “Avi Nesher is clearly Israel’s most innovative filmmaker.” Avi Nesher was born and raised in Ramat Gan, Israel. The child of a Romanian-born diplomat, and a mother who came from Russia.[2] In 1965, he moved with his family to the United States. He graduated high school at sixteen and studied international relations at Columbia University. In 1971, he returned to Israel and served in the IDF elite special forces unit Sayeret Matkal.
Quality Balls
Director: Barry Avrich
Barry Michael Avrich is a Canadian film director, film producer, playwright, author, marketing executive and arts philanthropist. Avrich’s film career has included critically acclaimed films about the entertainment business including The Last Mogul about film producer Lew Wasserman (2005), Glitter Palace about the Motion Picture Country Home (2005), and Guilty Pleasure about the Vanity Fair columnist and author Dominick Dunne (2004). Avrich also produced the Gemini-nominated television special Caesar and Cleopatra (2009) with Christopher Plummer.
Under the Same Sun
Director: Sameh Zoabi
Sameh Zoabi is a writer and director from Iksal, a small village in Israel. His feature debut, Man without a Cell Phone, was selected for the New Directors/New Films festival at MoMA and the Lincoln Center. His short film, “Be Quiet,” won third prize in the Cinéfondation Selection at the Cannes Film Festival. He has bachelor’s degrees in film studies and English literature from Tel Aviv University and attended the M.F.A. Film Program at Columbia on a merit scholarship.
It takes ambition to switch from helming comedies to exploring the Israeli-Palestinian relations, as the third feature effort from writer/director Lorraine Levy demonstrates. Following 2004’s The First Time I Turned Twenty and 2008’s My Friends My Loves with an intimate and moving family drama, her latest feature teems with narrative, emotional and aesthetic determination. Lorraine provided Sarah Ward with her thoughts on The Other Son.
Q: How did the project evolve, and what drew you to the storyline ?
A: This project was initially proposed to me by Virginie Lacombe, my producer, who had started working on it with two authors, Nathalie Saugeon and Noam Fitoussi, before approaching me. I was straight away seduced by this project, which contained a lot of themes that are important for me: the search for identity, inter-personal relationships, filiation. Having said that, I hesitated initially because I noticed a lot of traps forming and I was not sure that I would be able to avoid them. For a start, to tell a story embedded in a conflict that I am not directly involved in. Indeed, even if I am a citizen of the world, even if everything that happens in Israel touches me viscerally as a Jew, I am neither Israeli nor Palestinian. In the end, the desire was stronger than the fear and I went for it. I wanted to propose a story that would be a sort of an out-stretched hand, like a proposal for possible peace. At the very least, a proposal to accept the Other. [more]
In The Shadow
Director: David Ondricek
David Ondříček graduated from the school of documentary filmmaking at Prague’s FAMU. After making several documentaries he debuted in 1996 with The Whisper. The film became the second most attended in the Czech Republic in 1996, it was nominated for a Tiger Award at the Rotterdam IFF in 1997 and won the Promotional Award at the Festival of Young European Film in Cottbus. In 2000, David Ondříček presented his second feature film, Loners, which brought him great success at home and abroad. Loners received nine nominations in the Czech Lions, of which it won two. It also won three prizes at the Mannheim Heidelberg IFF in 2000 and in the same year received the viewers’ award at the Thessaloniki IFF and Warsaw IFF and three prizes at the film festival in Plzeň. One Hand Can’t Clap, his third feature film, premiered in 2003 and was nominated in three categories of the Czech Lions. It was awarded a Silver Medal at the Houston International Festival in the Independent Feature Film category. In 2006 David Ondříček then came out with Grandhotel, which was selected for the Panorama section at the Berlinale. Grandhotel was nominated for seven Czech Lions and went home with two.
Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy
Director: Michael Kantor
Michael Kantor’s 25 years’ experience in historical documentary filmmaking includes the six-part Emmy nominated series, Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business Of America (hosted by Billy Crystal and narrated by Amy Sedaris), Give Me The Banjo (narrated by Steve Martin), The Thomashefskys: Music And Memories Of A Life In The Yiddish Theater, and Quincy Jones: In The Pocket for the American Masters series. He has also created profiles of Arthur Miller and David Mamet for Thirteen’s series Egg: The Arts Show, and co-directed Cornerstone: An Interstate Adventure for HBO.
Kantor’s other credits include work on The West, a film by Stephen Ives (Executive Producer Ken Burns), Lindbergh, Coney Island, The Donner Party, Margaret Sanger, Out Of The Past, The Impressionists, and Ric Burns’ New York: A Documentary History series. Mr. Kantor wrote Lullabye Of Broadway: Opening Night On 42nd Street, which was produced by Metropolitan Entertainment in association with Ghost Light Films. With Laurence Maslon, Mr. Kantor is the co-author of the companion books to Make ‘Em Laugh And Broadway: The American Musical, and has published numerous essays and articles.
Six Million And One
Director: David Fisher
[Transcript of the Israel Film Center interview of David Fisher]
Q: Six Million and One is the third movie in your family trilogy. Can you tell us briefly about the other two, and how this third part is linked to the others?
A: They all began after my parents passed away. In the first of the films, Love Inventory […] I recruited my siblings to look for our missing sister as a tribute to my Mom, a mission I rebelled against fulfilling while she was still alive. The other two were made almost at the same time and both talk about fatherhood.
Q: Can you tell us about the moment you discovered your late father’s memoir?
A: It was when we came to my father’s home to clean it up after he passed away. It was in his drawer nearby his bed. It was as if he had written until his last day, which indeed he did. I was amazed, even shocked and of course very curious to find who he really was and what he thought.
Q: Did you know immediately that you wanted to act upon the information the memoir contained, and produce a documentary about your journey?
Actually not. It took me 8 years to understand that I wanted to and that I had to create a film. I started by deconstructing my father’s memoir to chapters and stories and situations. [more]
Cast A Giant Shadow
Director: Melville Shavelson
Melville Shavelson (1917 – 2007) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and author. He came to Hollywood in 1938 as one of comedian Bob Hope’s joke writers, a job he held for the next five years. He is responsible for the screenplays of such Hope films as The Princess and the Pirate (1944), Where There’s Life (1947), The Great Lover (1949), and Sorrowful Jones (1949), which also starred Lucille Ball.
Shavelson was nominated twice for Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay—first for 1955’s The Seven Little Foys, starring Hope in a rare dramatic role, and then for 1958’s Houseboat. He shared both nominations with Jack Rose. He also directed both films.
Ari’s first credit came as the Associate Producer of the runaway hit documentary, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. The documentary was one of the top ten all-time grossing theatrical documentaries.
Following that film came the award winning feature documentary, Paper Clips, distributed by Miramax Films. The film won several Audience and Best Documentary Awards including the Best Documentary at the 2003 Palm Springs International Film Festival.
Ari was also Co-Producer of Everything Must Go, starring Will Ferrell and Rebecca Hall, distributed by Lionsgate Films in 2011. He was also Co-Executive Producer of The Ides of March (5 2012 Golden Globes Nominations) directed by and starring George Clooney.
Jonathan Gruber
Jonathan has been directing award-winning documentary films, commercials, and videos for more than 20 years. He loves creating evocative images and telling nuanced stories, whether for a 30-second advertisement or a two-hour feature. Projects that Jonathan directed and produced have screened at festivals and in theaters nationwide and around the world, and have aired on PBS, The History Channel, National Geographic, Discovery Networks, and more.
Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray, another film that he directed, wrote, and produced, screened at the 2012 Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival and is currently airing on PBS stations nationally.
Torn
Director: Ronit Kertsner
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); and most recently, Torn (Docaviv International Film Festival).
Hava Nagila (The Movie)
Director: Roberta Grossman
An award-winning filmmaker with a passion for history and social justice, Roberta Grossman has written and produced more than forty hours of documentary television. She was the series producer and co-writer of 500 Nations, the eight-hour CBS mini-series on Native Americans hosted by Kevin Costner. Grossman’s feature documentary, Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, premiered in February 2005, and has screened and won awards at more than forty festivals worldwide. It aired on public television stations in November 2005.
Other writing and producing credits include In the Footsteps of Jesus, a four-hour special for the History Channel; Hollywood & Power: Women on Top, a special for AMC; The Rich in America: 150 Years of Town and Country Magazine for A&E; The History of Christianity: The First Thousand Years, a four-hour special on A&E; Medal of Honor, a six-part television series produced for U.S. News & World Report; Heroines of the Hebrew Bible and Judas for the A&E series Mysteries of the Bible; and Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh.
Foreign Letters
Director: Ela Thier
Ela Thier’s credits include The Wedding Cow (writer), garnering eighteen international awards, including four Best-Feature and four Audience-Choice awards; Foreign Letters (writer-director); and Puncture (story), a film starring Chris Evans. Ela has written, directed, and produced over a dozen short films, including A Summer Rain, which won four Best-Short awards and screened at more than 150 venues and festivals.
A prolific writer, Ela’s feature scripts have been selected four times by the Independent Film Week (formerly IFP Market). Among numerous recognitions, Ela was awarded a fellowship grant in screenwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2008), and was nominated for the White House Project Emerging Artist Award (2010).
Ela independently teaches screenwriting and film directing in New York City.
Footnote
Director: Joseph Cedar
Cedar was born in New York. When he was 6 his family moved to Israel, and he grew up in the Bayit VeGan neighborhood in Jerusalem. He studied in a Yeshiva High School.
In the Israeli army he served as a paratrooper. After graduating in Philosophy and History of theatre from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem he studied cinema studies in the New York University. When he came back to Israel he started working on the screenplay for his debut film, Time of Favor (2000), for which he moved and lived for 2 years in the Israeli settlement Dolev. The film became a big success and won 6 Ofir Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
His second film was Campfire (2004) who was also a success with 5 Ofir Academy Awards including Best Picture, with 2 of them, Best Director and Best Screenplay, going to Cedar. For Beaufort (2007), his third film, he received the Silver Bear award for Best Director in the Berlin International Film Festival. Beaufort became one of the most critically acclaimed and successful Israeli films of the decade and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, the first such nomination for an Israeli film in 24 years. It also received 4 Ofir Academy Awards and was based on Cedar’s own experiences during his army service on Israel’s border with Lebanon. It was shown at the 2012 Baton Rouge Film Festival.
Cedar is an Orthodox Jew. His films are known to touch delicate issues of Israeli society. Israeli critic Yair Rave wrote:
One of the reasons I like Cedar’s films so much is… his ability to merge the Israeli spirit… with the universal cinematic codes.
His film Footnote premiered In Competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. The film was named as one of the five nominees for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012.
