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2025 Speakers

Sabbath queen

Sandi Simcha DuBowski discussion


Sandi Simcha DuBowski is the Director/Producer of SABBATH QUEEN and TREMBLING BEFORE G-D, Producer of A JIHAD FOR LOVE, and Co-Producer of BUDRUS. His award-winning work has screened at Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, and Toronto, theatrically released in 150 cities, and broadcast on ZDF/Arte, BBC, Channel 4, PBS. In 2020, he was invited to become a member of the Documentary Branch of the Outreach Director of Doc Society’s Good Pitch. He is the Co-Founder of The Creative Resistance, a collective of media makers who create award-winning political ads and design. In the mid-1990, he began his media and activism work at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, focused on the Christian right and the anti-abortion movement. Three generations of DuBowski’s family made chocolate syrup in Deep Coastal Brooklyn.

elie wiesel: soul on fire

Oren Rudavsky discussion

 

Oren Rudavsky's first jobs in NYC after graduating from college were as the post-production supervisor for the television shows Tales from the Darkside and Monsters, and on the film unit of Saturday Night Live. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and several National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts grants. Rudavsky co-wrote and directed the American Masters documentary, Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People. The film was nominated for an Emmy as part of the American Masters series as well as a Critics Choice Award. His film A Life Apart: Hasidism in America was short-listed for the Academy Awards and broadcast on PBS and his film Hiding and Seeking: Faith After the Holocaust was nominated for an Independent Spirit award and was chosen for the PBS POV series.

Rudavsky was the media producer for the permanent installations at the Russian Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, which opened in 2013. He recently completed Elie Wiesel: Soul On Fire a feature documentary also with National Endowment for the Humanities funding in co-production with PBS American Masters. 

OCTober 8

Kenneth S. Stern discussion

 

Kenneth S. Stern is the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate and an attorney and award-winning author. For twenty-five years, he was the American Jewish Committee's expert on antisemitism. He has argued before the Supreme Court of the United States, testified before both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, was an invited presenter at the White House Conference on Hate Crimes, and served as a member of the U.S. Delegation to the Stockholm Forum on Combating Intolerance. He has been a visiting assistant professor of Jewish Studies and a visiting assistant professor of Human Rights at Bard College. He is co-chair of the Higher Education/Hate Studies working group for the Eradicate Hate Global Summit.

As a trial attorney before his AJC tenure, Stern was involved in several high-visibility cases, among them his defense of American Indian Movement co-founder Dennis Banks in one of the last post-Wounded Knee cases (his book about this case, Loud Hawk: The United States vs. The xAmerican Indian Movement won the prestigious Gustavus Myers Award). His book about the Oklahoma City bombing -- A Force Upon The Plane: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate -- was nominated for the National Book Award. He also has written books on antisemitism and on Holocaust denial. His most recent book is The Conflict Over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debate (New Jewish Press, 2020).

MIDAS MAN

Seth Rogovoy discussion

 

Seth Rogovoy is the author of Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press), Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet (Scribner), and The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover’s Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music (Algonquin). Seth’s weekly cultural commentary can be heard on “The Rogovoy Report” on WAMC Northeast Public Radio Network on Fridays between 12:50 and 1pm.

Bad shabbos

Daniel Robbins discussion


Daniel Robbins is a NYC-based director. In his films, he takes exciting concepts and grounds them with authentic performances, surprising humor, and propulsive energy.  

His breakout film PLEDGE was a hit at Fantasia Film Festival and sold to IFC Midnight as well as a streaming deal with Hulu. He also won “Best Director” at Screamfest. Variety calls it a “lean and mean shocker,” the New York Times proclaims “...the director is willing to move beyond the tease of his setup to deliver a ringing indictment of popularity as the cheese in a deadly mousetrap,” and The Daily Beast calls it “a fleet, ferocious, and razor-sharp affair.”

His comedy feature CITIZEN WEINER was boarded by Abso Lutely and Village Roadshow and is currently streaming for free on Tubi. And BAD SHABBOS, which won the Audience Award at Tribeca, is currently in select theaters.

aint no back to a merry-go-round

Avi Dresner discussion

 

Avi Dresner is a journalist, documentary filmmaker and screenwriter. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, and he is a two-time winner of the Rockower Award (aka "the Jewlitzer”:) from the American Jewish Press Association. He is Executive Producer of the documentary-in-progress, “The Rabbi & The Reverend” and co-screenwriter of the feature film script “King’s Rabbi”, both of which tell the story of his father, Rabbi Israel Dresner, the most arrested and jailed rabbi during the Civil Rights Movement and an ally and friend of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse

Molly Bernstein discussion

 

Molly Bernstein is the director, producer, and editor of Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, a documentary that premiered at the New York Film Festival, received a wide theatrical release, and was selected by the Dublin and Glasgow International film festivals. Deceptive Practice was named one of Entertainment Weekly’s top 10 films of the year and aired on the PBS series American Masters. Bernstein directed and edited An Art That Nature Makes: The Work of Rosamond Purcell, a New York Times Critic’s Pick that premiered at Film Forum inNYC, played in over 20 theaters nationwide and at: The Folger Shakespeare Library; MASS Moca; Museum of Art in Portland, Maine; TheCenter forContemporary Arts in Sante Fe; and at The Natural History Museum of Denmark. Bernstein produced, directed, and edited The Show’s The Thing: The Legendary Promoters of Rock, a feature documentary selected by festivals including DOC NYC, the Boulder, Cleveland, and Doclands International Film Festivals, Doc’n Roll Film Festival in London, and Asbury Park Music & Film Festival. The Show’s The Thing aired on Sky Arts in the UK. Bernstein has had an extensive career as an editor with credits including Turn EveryPage: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb (Sony Pictures Classics) and the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About (American Masters). She has produced and directed many short films with Particle Productions on various subjects such as contemporary international artists and art collectors, environmental issues, and climate activists. She's on the film faculty of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.  

Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse

Philip Dolin discussion

 

Philip Dolin has produced and directed over 100 films about art, architecture, dance, the environment, and many other subjects. His clients have included universities, non-profit organizations, art galleries, museums and a variety of businesses. He started out producing hip-hop videos in the early ‘90s for rap artists Salt-N Pepa, MC Lyte, Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor and many others. He was recently the executive producer and cinematographer of An Art That Nature Makes: The Work of Rosamond Purcell. He was also a producer of Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, which was named one of the top ten films of 2013 by Entertainment Weekly. He recently directed and produced the feature documentary The Show’s The Thing: The Legendary Promoters of Rock, which The Hollywood Reporter called “essential viewing for anyone interested in music industry history.”  


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