Regeneration

Images

Jewish figures for sale in Warsaw

Young Jews gather in a Warsaw bar

Crowds at Jewish Culture Festival, Krakow

Young woman with other Jews in Warsaw

Class in Jewish dancing

The Sway Machinery perform in refurbished synagogue

Topics

Arts & Culture: World Music
Human Rights: Religion

Project Geography

International: Europe

Identity Niches

Jewish

Budget

Raised to date: $47,500.00
Estimate to complete: $332,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $379,500.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 10/01/2010

Status

Production

Media Type

Video

Project End Use

TV

Key Personnel

Adam Zucker
Producer/Director

Adam Zucker is an independent filmmaker and editor. His recent film, the award winning Greensboro: Closer to the Truth (2007) tells the story of the 1979 killing in Greensboro, NC of five communist labor organizers by Ku Klux Klan and Nazis. Despite extensive television footage, no one was ever convicted. The film reconnects 25 years later with the players in this tragedy – widowed and wounded survivors, along with their attackers – and chronicles how their lives have evolved in the long aftermath of the killings. All converge when the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission ever held in the United States is convened in Greensboro.

The film premiered at South by Southwest, and went on to screen at over 35 festivals in the U.S. and abroad, and received the Audience Award for Best Feature at the Rome International Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Dead Center Film Festival. In addition, the film has been shown at dozens of universities and educational settings, including the United Nations and the Council on Foundations Film Festival. The film’s Audience Engagement effort, The Closer to the Truth Project, is using the film as a catalyst for varied communities across the U.S. to come up with their own self-initiated methods to deal with deep-seated local issues. Participating communities include Charlottesville, Virginia; Chicago; Dayton, Ohio; Mississippi; Maine; and Oakland, California.

Adam has received grants from the Sundance Documentary Fund, Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the Southern Humanities Media Fund, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Wellspring Foundation and many others. He was the producer/director of the concluding episode of Free to Dance, a three-part Emmy award-winning series documenting the African American contribution to modern dance for PBS. He also co-wrote the series with Madison Davis Lacy.

For many years Adam has worked an editor, and has cut numerous award-winning documentaries. Edited projects include Rory Kennedy’s American Hollow (Sundance Film Festival and HBO) and Homestead Steel Strike (History Channel, Ten Days That Changed America series); Michael Kantor’s Broadway: The American Musical (PBS); Madison Davis Lacy’s Richard Wright: Black Boy (PBS); Ken Burns and Steve Ives’ The West (PBS); Dori Berinstein’s Show Business (Tribeca Film Festival and Showtime), and Gotta Dance (Tribeca Film Festival); and Josef Astor’s upcoming Last Days of Carnegie Studios.

Richard Hankin
Editor

Richard Hankin is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and editor. He has worked on documentaries for both theatrical distribution and for HBO, PBS, NBC, ABC, and Showtime. Capturing the Friedmans, which Richard edited and co-produced, won numerous awards including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and an Emmy, and was nominated for an Academy Award. It played in theaters across the country and abroad. Other editing projects include Mark Becker's Romántico; Dori Berinstein's Show Business; HBO's Peabody Award-winning Cancer: Evolution to Revolution; Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight; New York: A Documentary Film; and the Ken Burns film The West.

In addition, Richard directed, produced and edited the feature documentary Home Front, which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, and on the Showtime Network on Veterans Day. Time Magazine named Home Front one of the Top Ten films of the year.

Scott Anger
Director of Photography

Scott Anger is an award-winning cinematographer, independent journalist, photographer and documentary filmmaker whose work has spanned every medium over the past 25 years.  Scott has helped produce four independent documentary films: Richard Hankin’s Home Front (Showtime), Adam Zucker’s Greensboro: Closer to the Truth (theatrical), Deborah Dickson’s Witnesses to a Secret War (PBS) and Deborah Dickson and Muffy Meyers’ The Lost Bird Project (in production).

As a freelance photojournalist, Scott worked on assignment for a number of leading publications. In 1996, he began producing radio stories for National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corporation both in the U.S. and while living in Southeast Asia. From 1998 to 2000, Scott was Voice of America’s bureau chief based in Islamabad from where he covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.  After 9/11, Scott began reporting, field producing and shooting films for the documentary program Frontline on PBS.  Since then, he has helped produce seven films for the program including two which received duPont Awards. He serves as Director of Video at The Los Angeles Times. 

Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)

Many Americans, particularly American Jews, are thoroughly familiar with the story of Poland during the World War Two era. Countless films have been made about the Holocaust and the devastating results for Polish Jewry. In fact many people are under the impression that “there are no Jews in Poland” today.

Regeneration will be a powerful vehicle in opening people’s eyes to the two intertwined transformations going on in Poland—the revival of Jewish culture, as well as the new developments in Jewish communities. The film will cast Poland in a new light for many viewers, whether seen in a simple screening or within a fullblown educational outreach effort. The documentary will help to re-frame critical questions of Jewish identity as a minority population, the viability of secular as opposed to religious community, how Jewish people can learn from the past without being overwhelmed and defined by it, and does Polish Jewry have a real future.

The film’s distribution strategy will start with its roll out at national and international film festivals, providing the initial platform and helping to attain critical attention. Those screenings will help fuel broadcast interest domestically as well as internationally. Partnership with an engaged and inspired educational distributor will help place the film in schools and libraries where it can maintain a long life in ancillary markets. Sustained engagement at screenings and with special interest organizations will lead to a vast mailing list, helping to fuel DVD sales in the home video market.

The specific targeted audience for the film is American Jews, many of whom have roots in Poland itself, or in the Ashkenazi, Eastern European culture stemming from pre-war Poland. The film will tap into this audience in a number of ways: inclusion in the extensive network of Jewish film festivals in the U.S. and abroad; following up on the wide array of synagogues and Jewish community centers for special screenings and presentations; and working with the multitude of Jewish based organizations hungry for material on the nature of Jewish identity.

While the tiny Jewish communityin Poland is in some ways unique, many of the film’s issues are universal and will appeal to significantly wider audiences. Specifically, questions of the nature of religious vs. secular life, a minority identity within an otherwise homogenous society, and how one’s heritage informs contemporary life are questions that many non-Jewish people confront on a daily basis—minorities of all kinds and persuasions. The film will be targeted to those viewers as well.

With its focus on four dynamic, young characters facing life-changing decisions at a critical time of growth (all are in their 20’s), the film’s narrative arc will engage all documentary audiences.

In addition to exposure via festivals and broadcast presentation, the film will build an extensive Audience Engagement strategy to move the film beyond standard documentary venues and into community and educational settings. There it will be able to reach even greater number of viewers. As with The Closer to the Truth Project (designed for Greensboro: Closer to the Truth), materials will be prepared connecting the specific situations in Regeneration to other communities and their own situations. Relevant organizations will be sought out during the film’s production, planting the seeds for the eventual audience engagement. By partnering with organizations already working in the field, the Outreach Project will build upon their work to efficiently interact with targeted audiences and maximize the film's impact.

Funders

Location