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The Filmaker: Tod Lending

 

David Mrazek: Producer, Director, Writer

David Mrazek: Producer, Director, Writer David Mrazek is an award-winning producer and writer of numerous prime-time PBS history and science documentary series, as well as documentaries for The History Channel and Travel Channel. He was series producer and co-writer of The Kingdom of David: The Saga of the Israelites. Filmed on location in Israel, Tunisia, Morocco, and Greece, this four-hour PBS series tells how remarkable biblical stories gave birth to Judaism and kept these unlikely people together in the face of repeated conquest.

Mrazek has produced and co-written two programs for the PBS American Experience series. The Duel explores how the threat of a duel was an 18th century political tool, and details how clashing egos resulted in the fatal shots fired between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Within the compelling social, political and economic context of the times, Woodrow Wilson explores the transformation of a history professor into one of America's greatest presidents. The three-hour series won the 2002 IDA Achievement Award for Limited Series. The film was also produced in an interactive format on DVD that allows viewers and students to explore topics related to Wilson.

Mr. Mrazek was producer, director, and co-writer of Keepers of the Biosphere, the third episode of Intimate Strangers: Unseen Life on Earth, the four-part PBS science series on the microbial world. Keepers follows two scientists, one studying microbial/insect symbiosis in a Costa Rican rain forest, the other searching for the environmental role of an elusive microbe in the waters of the Sargasso Sea and Pacific Ocean. The series is currently being used as a supplement in teaching science and microbiology in schools and colleges across the United States.

Mrazek was producer and co-editor of multiple episodes of the landmark ten-part PBS series The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century. The series explores the impact of the First World War through first person accounts of people who experienced it, both royal and ordinary, in battle and on the home front. The series garnered a Peabody, Emmy, and duPont Columbia awards, as well as an IDA Achievement Award.

Mrazek also produced, directed, wrote, and edited My Prague Spring, a feature documentary that presents an intimate, wry portrait of one Czech family a few months after the "Velvet Revolution" toppled communism in Czechoslovakia. It won the Gold Award at WorldFest Houston, and was Best of Festival at the Berkeley Video Festival.

More about David Mrazek

 

Slawomir Grunberg: Cinematographer

Slawomir Grunberg: CinematographerBorn in Lublin, Poland, Slawomir Grunberg is a graduate of Polish Film School in Lodz, where he studied cinematography and directing. From 1974-76, he worked as a cinematographer for Polish Television Network in Warsaw. He emigrated from Poland to the U.S. in 1981, and has since shot and produced over 35 television documentaries. His independent works, which focus on critical social and political issues, have won him international recognition.

Mr. Grunberg has been a contributing director of photography and editor for several PBS series: Frontline, American Masters, NOVA, AIDS Quarterly, and Health Quarterly. He has also filmed for ABC, NBC, HBO, Lifetime, and Discovery networks. In 2000, Mr. Grunberg won the Emmy Award for a documentary he photographed, directed, and co-produced: School Prayer: A Community at War. His directing of photography credits include Legacy, which received an Academy AwardŽ nomination for best documentary feature in 2001.

Slawomir Grunberg has been honored to receive several fellowships: a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Documentary Filmmaking (1997); a New York Artists' Fellowship (2002); and a Soros Justice Media Fellowship (2003).

More about Slawomir Grunberg

 

Sidney Lubitsch: Cinematographer

Sidney Lubitsch: CinematographerMr. Lubitsch's experience as Cinematographer/Videographer spans documentary, dramatic and educational programming as well as episodic television. He has worked throughout America and to all corners of the world from Japan and Europe to South America, Africa, India and Australia.

Documentary credits include: "Hoop Dreams" produced by Kartemquin Films; PBS, various Frontline and Nova segments; "Age 7 in America" produced by Granada Television, second unit photography; for TBS. He shot segments of "Twin Stories", "Skin Deep" and was D.P. for "Good to Go" NASCAR at 50, all produced by Tuner Original Productions; numerous shows for Towers Productions including, American Justice, Biography, The Unexplained for A&E and The History Channel.

He was camera operator for five episodes of "Missing Persons" a dramatic TV series on ABC produced by Cannell Productions. His broadcast clients include MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, ABC News, CBS News, CNN and Dateline NBC.

 

Sheldon Mirowitz: Composer

Sheldon Mirowitz: ComposerComposer Sheldon Mirowitz has scored more than 50 film and TV projects. He has been nominated three times for an Emmy Award for best music, first in 1993 for his score to the seven-part series Columbus and the Age of Discovery, again in 2002 for his score to the six-part series Evolution, and most recently for the score to the A&E movie The Nazi Officer’s Wife.

His credits include the score to the Oscar-nominated Troublesome Creek, winner of both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at Sundance 1996 (soundtrack available on Daring/Rounder Records), Oscar-nominated Legacy, and the score for the Peabody Award-winning mini-series Odyssey of Life (soundtrack available on Windham Hill/BMG).

Toothless Sheldon in 20 years
Toothless Sheldon in 20 years

He has written theme music for networks ranging from MTV to The History Channel, and has scored hundreds of radio and television commercials, including award winning work for such clients as Converse, Kodak, UPS, Reebok, and AT&T.

More about Sheldon Mirowitz

 

Philip Sheppard: Composer

Philip Sheppard: ComposerPhilip Sheppard is a British composer who writes film and television soundtracks. He is also a solo cellist and a Professor at the Royal Academy of Music.

Recent films include In the Shadow of the Moon (which won numerous awards including the World Documentary Prize at Sundance), Henry Mind of a Tyrant for David Starkey's landmark C4 series and the forthcoming feature Sergio.

He was was commissioned to compose and produce the music for the London 2012 Handover sequence at the Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony. This included a new version of the UK National Anthem. He recorded and conducted the London Symphony Orchestra playing his Olympic sequence entitled This Is London.

His stageworks include Sacred Monsters for Sylvie Guillem and Akram Khan, and In-I starring Khan and Juliette Binoche.

He regularly writes and plays with the band UNKLE and has featured as a guest artist with numerous rock musicians including Scott Walker, Jeff Buckley, David Bowie and Jarvis Cocker.

 

Bob Edwards: Sound Designer and Mixer

Bob Edwards has been a sound designer, editor, and re-recording mixer at George Lucas’s Skywalker Sound in Marin County, CA since 1989, and has contributed his audio engineering skills to major motion pictures; documentaries; television, DVD, and commercial projects; film scores; and Internet sonification.

Edwards received a Cinema Audio Society Award and an Emmy Nomination for Best Sound for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series, and was also nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy Award for Best Sound for the feature-length documentary Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony.

Prior to his film and television career, Edwards was a music recording engineer, initially as a staff recording engineer and mixer for Record Plant Studios in Sausalito and Los Angeles and culminating as the Technical Director and Chief Recording Engineer for Aspen Film Society in Aspen, CO and Santa Barbara, CA.

 

Judy Ravitz: Outreach Consultant

Judy Ravitz is president of Outreach Extensions (OE), a national consulting firm that specializes in creating innovative educational and community outreach campaigns for media projects.

Prior to founding OE in 1992, Judy was director of community outreach at KCET/Los Angeles, for which her work was recognized with the Media Award for Urban Outreach Model by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1989.

Trained as a sociologist, she taught college-level courses and advised on fieldwork before becoming executive director of the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women (1980–1985).

Judy brings both academic and community-based experience to the community empowerment media campaigns OE represents. Her broad range of communications and social methodology skills include strategic planning, empowerment modes, crisis/risk management, community ascertainments and coalition building.

Judy has a Master of Arts degree in Sociology from California State University, Northridge and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

 

Ken Ravitz: Outreach Consultant

Ken Ravitz is vice president and chief financial officer for Outreach Extensions. In that capacity, he oversees all finances/budgets and contracts (funders, producers, outreach consultants) in association with OE’s work. He works in close communication with public television stations on project-related grant activities, recruiting their participation, providing technical assistance, and managing their grants. An elementary school teacher and learning disabilities specialist for over 20 years, Ken spearheads all of OE’s educational campaigns.

His expertise in designing Web sites was recognized with the 1999 PBS Eddie Award for the Noddy Web site as the Best Parent/Teacher Information on a Kids’ Site. Ken has a master’s degree in education from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelor of Arts from University of California, Los Angeles.

 

Bhagyashree RaoRane: Coordinating Producer/Field Director

Bhagyashree RaoRane: Coordinating Producer/Field DirectorFor the last three years, Bhagyashree RaoRane has worked as a Field Director, Associate Producer, and writer for the History Channel, CNBC and several feature length documentaries. Her recent work has taken her all over the world - Nigeria, El Salvador, Hong Kong and Japan, just to name a few. Her documentary career began with Gypsy Caravan, a dynamic musical documentary that followed five Gypsy bands from four countries as they took their show around North America for a six-week tour. The tales of these characters are woven between their performances - allowing us to understand and celebrate Romani culture and the prejudice of their shared ancestry. Current projects include post-production on The Edge of Joy, a feature length documentary on maternal mortality in Nigeria, and Happiness, also a feature length documentary that sets out to explore the science of happiness that has blossomed over the last decade, and the impact it is having as it gains popular attention through the media.

 

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