Oren Rudavsky
Producer/Director/Writer/Camera
Producing films since 1980, Oren Rudavsky is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to producing Selfhelp’s Witness Theater film, Rudavsky is producing a PBS American Masters documentary on Joseph Pulitzer. He recently completed the theatrically released films The Ruins of Lifta, about an abandoned Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem; and Colliding Dreams, a history of Zionism. Also broadcast this year on PBS was Time for School, a twelve-year longitudinal study following the education of seven children in the developing world.
His film A Life Apart: Hasidism in America was short-listed for the Academy Awards and his film Hiding and Seeking was nominated for an Independent Spirit award.
Rudavsky was the producer of media for the permanent installations at the Russian Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. Other films Rudavsky has produced include a series of profile documentaries for Bloomberg television called Risk Takers. His first fiction feature The Treatment premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival where it was awarded Best Film, Made in New York.
Rudavsky’s other work includes writing and producing segments for the ABC national series PrimeTime Live, the PBS series Media Matters, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly and other national programming. He has also worked as a post-production supervisor on the film unit of Saturday Night Live and the syndicated series Tales From the Darkside, as well as a cameraperson on The Real World.
Zelda Greenstein
Editor
Zelda Greenstein's work as film editor has been screened at almost every Jewish film festival in the world, and on PBS and HBO. Zelda’s editing credits include: Touchdown Israel (2014), One Voice (2009) [Audience choice award, Hawaii International Film Festival], Praying with Lior (2007) [best documentary award at many Jewish film festivals], Hiding & Seeking: Faith and Tolerance after the Holocaust (2004) [Opening film for the New York Jewish Film Festival, POV], Divan (2003) [Tribeca Film Festival ], 90 Miles (2001) International Human Rights Watch Film Festival) (2001) International Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
Other celebrated work includes, Women of the Wall, Enemy of the People, and An American Love Story. Her early work included assistant editing on the landmark film Partisans of Vilna.
Clare and Olivier Manchon
Composers
Based in Kingston NY (from Brooklyn/Paris), We come from a background of writing, recording and touring, sharing with live audiences. We had the band Clare and the Reasons for 3 studio albums, 2 live albums and several world tours. Olivier leads Orchestre de Chambre Miniature (currently dormant but will wake someday!). One of our main focuses when writing music for image is quality of sound. Since we have a human string orchestra, (Olivier) we're able to create all real strings and don't have to cave in to fake string sounds because of budget; something that has become all too common nowadays. We're thrilled by taking on projects and creating a palette that paints musical contours as boldly or subtile as the film calls for.
Joel Orloff
Animator
Joel Orloff is an animator and cartoonist living in Providence Rhode Island. He got his BA in English from Vassar College. In addition to producing animation for the Witness Theater Project Documentary, he is currently working on adapting Kafka's last novel, The Castle, into a comic book. When he's not drawing he is riding his bike, rearranging his room, or exploring the wilderness with his dog. You can check out his sketches at his (infrequently updated) blog: skaweeerureeweeert.tumblr.com.
Jazzman Lee Johnson
Animator
Jazzmen Lee-Johnson is a visual artist, scholar, composer, and curator. She received her BA in Film and Animation at the Rhode Island School of Design and her MA in Public Humanities at Brown University, where she was also a Public History of Slavery Fellow at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice.
As a multi-medium artist working in animation, printmaking, music, and performance Lee-Johnson’s creative practice consists of remixing/ redressing the history of the African diaspora by transmuting historical archives, art collections, and research into contemporary cultural forms relevant to a mobile-technological generation. As an emerging curator, Lee-Johnson has curated exhibitions at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the RISD Museum, and the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, as well as Artist Proof Studio and the ABSA Art Gallery in Johannesburg. She has performed and exhibited, internationally from Benin, Belgium, Mali, South Africa and Brazil, to India, Germany, Cuba, Holland and the USA. Lee-Johnson traverses the subjects of critical race theory, the Atlantic slave trade, Black feminist theory, museum interpretation, and new media studies in both her curatorial and artistic endeavors. She is developing a vibrant interdisciplinary practice that explores the cultural assemblages of our society to illuminate their connections/ fragmentations and provoke creatively critical and active spectatorship. Currently Jazzmen is in production of her forthcoming afro-surrealist audio/visual graphic novel Grandma’s Lament/ Sello Sa Nkoko in collaboration with her multi-media arts collective Folk Told ME.