Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People
DESCRIPTION
Feature length documentary for PBS' American Masters that examines the life and legacy of the great newspaper publisher, Joseph Pulitzer. Narrated by Adam Driver. Voice of Pulitzer - Liev Schreiber.
Accepted at Mill Valley Film Festival and Hot Springs Film Festival.
PBS American Masters (2019)
Witness Theater
DESCRIPTION
Feature length documentary following a year of the Witness Theater Program, in which high schoolers and Holocaust survivors share stories and create a play based on survivor experience.
Production completed (2018)
The Ruins of Lifta
DESCRIPTION
Lifta is the only Arab village abandoned in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that has not been completely destroyed or repopulated by Jews. Its haunting ruins are now threatened by an Israeli development plan that would convert it into an upscale Jewish neighborhood. After learning that Lifta was once a place where Jews and Arabs coexisted, Menachem Daum—an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn— joins Yacoub Odeh—expelled from the village and campaigning to save its ruins—in an effort to preserve Lifta as a place of reflection and reconciliation. This sets up a climactic encounter between a Holocaust survivor and a Nakba refugee amidst the ruins of Lifta.
released 2016
Colliding Dreams
DESCRIPTION
Colliding Dreams, from award winning filmmakers Joseph Dorman and Oren Rudavsky, is a feature length documentary on one of today’s most explosive issues—the question of Zionism and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The film is a searching and dramatic exploration of the dream of a Jewish state and its impact on both Jews and Arabs, unfolding across the broad one hundred fifty year canvas of history from 19th century Europe to the modern Middle East. Told through the remarkable lives and voices of Jews and Palestinians living in the Middle East today, Colliding Dreams weaves together past and present, ideas and passions, and wars and peace talks. It unites brilliant minds with the voices of ordinary citizens to develop a film portrait of sensitivity and depth like none before, of the story of Zionism and its controversies.
Released 2015
Time for school
DESCRIPTION
Time for School: 2003-2016, a longitudinal documentary project, portrays the gripping stories of five kids in five countries who are struggling against the odds for a basic education. These children live in countries—India, Brazil, Kenya, Afghanistan and Benin—where poverty, child labor, early marriage, and the chaos of war prevent legions of young people from getting an education.
Time for School began filming with these students during their first days of school and followed them for 12 years. In 2003, they all began at the same starting gate, all bright and eager to learn. Soon, growing contrasts emerged in the quality and stability of the children’s educations and each faced obstacles that threatened their ability to remain in school.
The unique longitudinal documentary project was inspired by the Millennium Development Goal of "education for all," a promise that 189 nations made to the United Nations in 2000, to provide every child around the world with a free primary education by 2015. While there has been progress over the past 15+ years, there are still 58 million children out of school around the globe and around 100 million who do not complete primary school—in spite of universal recognition that education is the smartest anti-poverty investment that any country can make.
Released 2003 -2016
Risk Takers
DESCRIPTION
Risk Takers is a series for Bloomberg TV; Oren Rudavsky wrote two episodes. Michelle Rhee, an American educator active in education reform, was the focus of one of the two episodes. Rudavsky's episodes are about Michael Burry, a New York based polymath, physician, investor, and hedge fund manager, and Michelle Rhee, school chancellor.
Released 2011
Forest Voices
DESCRIPTION
Russian Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center Media
Released 2013
To Educate a Girl
DESCRIPTION
In 2000, 110 million children in the world were not in school—two thirds of them were girls. In 2010, filmmakers Frederick Rendina and Oren Rudavsky traveled to Nepal and Uganda, two countries emerging from conflict and struggling with poverty, to find the answer to one question: what does it take to educate a girl? Framed by the United Nations global initiative to provide equal access to education for girls by 2015, To Educate a Girl takes a ground-up and visually stunning view of that effort through the eyes of girls out of school, starting school or fighting against the odds to stay in school.
Released 2010
Letter On The Blind,
For the Use of Those Who See
DESCRIPTION
Whitney Biennial film by artist Javier Téllez, produced by Oren Rudavsky. Borrowing the title from French philosopher Denis Diderot's treatise on how the blind and sighted do and do not understand each other, Téllez's video and installation enact an Asian parable in which six blind individuals relay the experience of touching an elephant.
Released 2008
The treatment
DESCRIPTION
Jake Singer is an anxious young schoolteacher in New York, barely on speaking terms with his father, recently abandoned by his girlfriend, and heading for a life of compromise and mediocrity. Emotionally paralyzed by his mother's death, he embarks on a course of psychoanalysis with a maniacal Freudian—Dr. Ernesto Morales, therapist from hell. But when he meets socialite widow Allegra Marshall and finds himself upwardly mobile in the Manhattan of serious money and glamour (as he bounces from the couch to Allegra's bed in the allegedly real world and back again) his whole life begins to take on the eerie, overdetermined quality of an analytic session and he must figure out his escape.
Feature starring Chris Eigeman, Famke Janssen, and Ian Holm, 2006. Awarded Best Film, Made in New York, Tribeca Film Festival; Awarded First Prize, Christopher Wetzel Award for Independent Film Comedy, Gene Siskel Center. Official Selection: Australia, Munich, Edinburgh, Athens, Newport, Mill Valley, Maui, Austin Film Festivals. Theatrical Release and DVD release
Released 2006
Hiding and Seeking
DESCRIPTION
Is it possible to heal wounds and bitterness passed down through generations? An Orthodox Jewish father tries to alert his adult sons to the dangers of creating impenetrable barriers between themselves and those outside their faith. He takes them on an emotional journey to Poland to track down the family who risked their lives to hide their grandfather for more than two years during World War II. Like many children of survivors, the sons feel that Poland is a country that is incurably anti-Semitic, but it is precisely here that they meet people who personify the highest levels of compassion. Hiding and Seeking explores the Holocaust's effect on faith in God as well as faith in our fellow human beings. A co-presentation with the Independent Television Service (ITVS).
Independent Spirit Award nomination.
Released 2004
New York Times Review
PBS Media Matters - Reckoning in York
DESCRIPTION
Reckoning in York for PBS Media Matters follows journalist Alex Kotlowitz in 2001 as the dueling newspapers of York, PA uncover the mayor's involvement in racial tensions and shootings in 1969
Released 2001
And Baby Makes Two
DESCRIPTION
And Baby Makes Two follows a group of single New York City 30- and 40-something women (and their often shocked and concerned parents), for whom the ticking of biological clocks is louder than the screech of the city's subway trains and taxi horns. Funny and poignant, the documentary takes the viewer on an emotional roller-coaster ride as we come to know and identify with the very human desires of the women in the film.
These are not strident political activists trying to make a point but rather ordinary women who have not found a partner willing to commit to a relationship, marriage, and/or fatherhood. Over the course of several years, these six women provide support and encouragement for one another as they journey towards motherhood in a world that has not looked kindly on single moms.
Released 1999
A Life Apart: Hasidism in America
DESCRIPTION
A 90 minute documentary that takes an in-depth look at a distinctive and traditional Eastern European Religious community that migrated to America at the end of World War II. Hasidism, while challenging American values, also embraces those which many Americans hold dear: family, community, and a close relationship to God. The film examines the conflicts, burdens, and rewards of a Hasidic life, integrating critical scholarship with portraits of the daily lives of New York City's Hasidic Jews.
Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities; Cine Golden Eagle Award; Charlotte Intl. Film Festival, First Prize; Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center; US Theatrical Release, 1997. PBS, 1998. Emmy nominee, 1999. Short-listed for Academy Awards Best Documentary
Twitch and shout
DESCRIPTION
Twitch and Shout is told through the eyes of Lowell Handler, a photojournalist who has traveled around the world taking pictures of people who, like himself, have TS. Their stories are fascinating, awe-inspiring, humorous, and sometimes heartbreaking. Desireé Ledet, an aspiring New York City actress, tells how men often misinterpret her involuntarily twitching eyebrows as a sexual come-on. David Jansen, an Alberta lumberjack, recalls the time he thought of taking a knife and cutting out that devil inside him. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (formerly Chris Jackson), a basketball player for the Denver Nuggets who channeled the obsessive behaviors into hours of practice, received the NBA's Most Improved Player Award in 1993. "For every infirmity," he says, "God gives you a strength." Living With Tourettes Syndrome - One Hour. POV, PBS 1995.
Released 1995
Director of Photography
A Kiss to this Land
DESCRIPTION
A KISS TO THIS LAND presents an oral history of seven fascinating individuals who arrived at Mexico’s shores in the early 20th century. Among them was a socialist idealist, a bride, and a Yiddish entertainer. In often poetic language, they talk about their unlikely decision to journey to an unknown destination and how they came to love that place, gradually building family and community while moving from youth to maturity. The documentary is enhanced by archival footage, still photographs, and an evocative soundtrack.
Released 1995
Director of Photography
The Last Klezmer: Leopold Kozlowski, his life and Music
DESCRIPTION
The filmmaker goes to Poland in search of one of the last known Klezmer musicians who is still living in Poland, once the heart of Jewish Klezmer music.
Berlin Film Festival, Honorable Mention; San Francisco Film Festival; London Jewish Film Festival; Jerusalem Film Festival, Theatrical Release, 1994/5.
Released 1994
Director of Photography
ABC PrimeTime Live
DESCRIPTION
Riding the Rails tracks the lives of several modern day hobos as they wander through exquisitely beautiful boxcar views of America along with reporter Jay Schadler.
RIDING THE RAILS -PrimeTime Live, 1992. Teddy Award.
Picture Perfect follows a group of young photographers as they scramble to find striking stories in the American heartland.
PICTURE PERFECT - PrimeTime Live, 1994. Cine Golden Eagle.
Released 1992 - 1994
The Real World
DESCRIPTION
Each season, series producers choose a diverse group of seven to eight people in their late teens to mid-20s (later early-20s to early 30s) to live together in a major city. The series presents their spontaneous, unscripted interactions with one another and the world around them, focusing on a different group and city each season.
Released 1992
Camera Person
No Place Like Home
DESCRIPTION
A Pittsburgh apartment superintendent loses his job and home when the apartment building where he lives and works at is suddenly destroyed by fire. Daniel and his family moves in with his brother but that doesn't last for long due to the two families not getting along with each other. The family moves from rundown hotels to homeless shelters as Daniel searches work as a electrician while his wife takes waitress jobs to try to make ends meet.
Emmy nominee. Golden Globe Winner.
Released 1989
Director of Photography
Voices from the attic
DESCRIPTION
This moving film is a personal document of Holocaust remembrance from a second-generation American perspective. Filmmaker Debbie Goodstein travelled to Poland to explore the ordeal of survival of her mother and fifteen family members who hid in the attic of a peasant's home during the Second World War. Accompanied by her aunt, Sally Frishberg, who was one of the sixteen, and five of her cousins, Goodstein records a haunting, and ultimately liberating voyage of discovery. VOICES FROM THE ATTIC is a unique and deeply affecting document that explores an overwhelming subject in an intimate and complexly meaningful way.
Telluride Film Festival, 1988; Berlin Film Festival, OCIC Award; San Francisco Film Festival, Special Jury Award, 1989; Global Village Film Festival, Best of Festival, 1989; Women in Film, Best Documentary, 1989.
Released 1986
Director of Photography
Sparks Among The Ashes
DESCRIPTION
"Jews of Cracow Await US Bar Mitzvah Boy," read the New York Times headline, as Eric Strom, a 13-year-old Connecticut boy, stood at the center of a complex human drama that attracted world-wide attention.
Sundance International Film Festival, Blue Ribbon, American Film Festival; Cine Golden Eagle; Chris Bronze Award, Columbus Film Fest.; Silver Plaque, Chicago Intl. Film Fest; Sundance Film Festival, Jerusalem Intl. Film Festival, 1987. PBS 1988.
Released 1986
The Amish: Not to be Modern
DESCRIPTION
"There are 90,000 Amish who live in the U.S. and Canada, and they exist without electricity, cars, and other conveniences normally taken for granted. Their unusual lifestyle features a strong sense of community, and they have managed to escape the high crime and unemployment problems that plague the rest of their countrymen. The Amish: Not to Be Modern looks at this peaceful group over the four seasons of the year, as they go about their daily work which revolves around agriculture, church, and domestic arts, such as quilting.
Cine Golden Eagle, 1984, PBS 1987-1996; A&E 1986.
Released 1984
Director of Photography
A Film about My Home
DESCRIPTION
A Film About My Home is an autobiographical portrait following the filmmaker as he walks down the street to his boyhood home and reveals the intimate details leading up to his mother's death. This deeply personal film is shot in one long dolly shot, which takes us from the anonymity of life on the street to the detailed tale inside the filmmaker's home.
New England Film Festival, Honorable Mention, 1981; CBS Cable, Artists and Mothers, 1984; WNET Independent Focus, 1983.
Released 1983
Dreams so Real
DESCRIPTION
Three Men's Stories focuses on three outpatients at a mental health facility in Northeast Ohio connected to the Nord Center. The filmmaker's spent several months working with Gerald, Michael and David as they worked with an animator and created stories and films about their experiences in the mental hospital. The filmmaker's film them during the workshop and at home. What emerges during this award-winning film is a portrait of struggle and determination and exquisite animated films which are quietly moving.
New England Film Festival, Best Film, 1981; International Rehabilitation Film Festival, First Prize, 1981; National Mental Health Association Film Festival, First Place, 1981; WNET Independent Focus, 1982.