2024 Boston Jewish Film Festival – Guests
Ilana Trachtman, Director/Producer, Ain’t No Back to a Merry Go Round
Ilana Trachtman has made Emmy award-winning nonfiction programs for over thirty years. For PBS, HBO Family, ABC-TV, Showtime, Lifetime, Discovery, A&E, and the Sundance Channel, she has explored worlds such as the legacy of slavery in Latin America, activism among Gulf Coast shrimpers, glassblowing with at-risk youth, and transgender parents. Prime-time directing credits for PBS include the independent feature Mariachi High (Imagen Award Nomination;) Black in Latin America hosted by Henry Louis Gates and Texas Ranch House. Ilana was a supervising producer on PBS’ History Detectives and the Sundance Channel’s Big Ideas for a Small Planet. Ilana began her career in the documentary unit of PBS’s Reading Rainbow. Ilana’s independent feature documentary Praying with Lior (BJFF 2007) played theatrically in over 60 cities in the US and abroad, garnered six Audience Awards for Best Documentary, the Grand Prix at the International Disability Film Festival, and was a critic’s pick of the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Washington Post. Ilana produced and directed The Pursuit: 50 Years in the Fight for LGBT Rights for WHYY, which won the Mid-Atlantic Emmy for Best Documentary. Most recently, she co-produced Stand Up and Shout: Songs from a Philly High School (HBO.)
Ed Gaskin, Moderator, Ain’t No Back to a Merry Go Round
Ed Gaskin is the founder of Aspen & Stowe LLC, which creates entertainment content for a variety of media platforms. As an adjunct professor at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, he co-taught a class for 25 years called, ” Christian and the Problem of Racism” for students preparing for the ministry. He is currently working on a book with a similar title. His most recent publication in the Times of Israel, titled “After the Tree of Life tragedy, I went to Shabbat services and never stopped,” which was shared over 1,600 times. Ed received a Masters of Divinity degree from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and a Masters of Science in Management from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. where he graduated as a Martin Trust Fellow. He currently attends Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley and Roxbury Presbyterian Church in Roxbury.
Maya Erdelyi, Writer/Director/Producer/Animator, Anyuka
Maya Erdelyi is a native New Yorker currently based in Boston. She is an award-winning animator/artist and director. She creates intricate hand-made animations and collages inspired by imaginary worlds, memories and the unconscious. Her animations explore a hybrid approach to cut-paper stop-motion, puppetry, hand-drawn, digital animation and installation. She is a recipient of a 2019 Yaddo Residency, a 2018 WGBH Launchpad Residency, a 2017 Brother Thomas Fellowship Award and the 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Film. Maya is a 2012 MFA graduate in Experimental Animation from CalArts and is the co-founder of Goose & Hummingbird, a mom & pop animation studio that she runs with her animator husband in Boston. Maya is a faculty member in animation at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and the Lesley College of Art + Design in Boston.
Finn Taylor, Writer/Director, Avenue of the Giants
Finn Taylor is a writer and director of six feature films, and a three-time Sundance Film Festival alum. His films have appeared in numerous festivals around the world and have been sold and distributed by Sony Picture Classics, StudioCanal, Fine Line, Lakeshore, and Paramount. Taylor’s film Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery. Variety, in its 50th Anniversary edition, selected Taylor for its prestigious list of “The Top 20 Creatives to Watch.”
Luke David Blumm, Actor, Avenue of the Giants
Luke David Blumm started his career with roles in TV hits such as The Sinner, The Walking Dead and Watchmen. At the age of nine, he made his feature film debut in Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island — alongside Pete Davidson, Marisa Tomei, and Bill Burr — and followed up with films such as Son, I Want You Back, and Where the Crawdads Sing. He was most recently seen in Ryan Murphy’s The Watcher for Netflix and played the lead in Lost on a Mountain in Maine from producer Braden Aftergood (Wind River, Hell or High Water). He is currently a freshman in high school and in rehearsals for his first school play.
Jeanine Thomas, Producer, Avenue of the Giants
With a background in the early days of the Internet and an M.S. in Psychology, first-time independent filmmaker Jeanine Thomas has worked in schools and in the San Francisco County Jail with maximum security inmates. Thomas met Herbert Heller, the protagonist of her independent film Avenue of the Giants, in 2015. She spent many hours hearing his life story and arranged for him to speak at multiple schools where she witnessed the effect Heller had on the teens in the audience, especially the quiet ones. This became her inspiration for creating Avenue of the Giants, a film about past and present trauma, secrets held, and, ultimately, healing.
Annika Chavez, Director, Bad Jew Good Girl (FreshFlix)
Annika Chavez is an award winning filmmaker based between LA and NY. Her films have screened at Palm Springs International Shortfest (Best U.S. Short Nominee), Annual Copenhagen Film Festival (Best Short Nominee), IFF-Boston, and Film Shortage, among others. She is a recipient of 2024 Cinema Femme Breaking Down Walls Mentorship Program and was a semifinalist for the NBC Nosotros Monologue Slam. Clients include: Flaunt Magazine, MCM, Dior, Fossil, and Vice.
Lucy Grebin, Writer/Producer/Actor, Bad Jew Good Girl (FreshFlix)
Lucy Grebin is a queer, Jewish, actor, writer, and comedian from New Jersey. She has studied acting at USC’s School of Dramatic Arts where she was awarded “Best Performance” and is currently a student at the Groundlings. She currently performs standup comedy all around LA and was selected for Best of the Fest in Burbank Comedy Festival at Flappers.
Daniel Robbins, Writer/Director, Bad Shabbos
Maayan Schwartz, Director, Children of Peace
Maayan Schwartz was born and raised in Neve Shalom-Wahat al Salam. Growing up in a mixed community of Jews and Arabs, has profoundly shaped Maayan Schwartz’s outlook on life and his approach to documentary filmmaking. Living in a place of mutual respect has given him an appreciation for the beauty of diversity, and has informed his work in film. His films explore the depths of the human experience, highlighting the need for connection, communication, and understanding across cultural boundaries. He strives to create stories that bring people together, inspiring hope and dialogue in the midst of conflict. Maayan completed his BFA at Sapir- Film School. In recent years he directed short films both fiction and documentary. Among them the film My friend ,Yaniv that was an official selection of IDFA 2016. Children of Peace is his first documentary feature film.
Tarek Masoud, Moderator, Children of Peace
Tarek Masoud is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the co-Editor of the Journal of Democracy of the National Endowment for Democracy, and serves as the Faculty Director of the Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative and the Initiative on Democracy in Hard Places. His research focuses on political development in Arabic-speaking and Muslim-majority countries. He is the author of Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2014), The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform with Jason Brownlee and Andrew Reynolds (Oxford University Press, 2015), and several articles and book chapters. He is a 2009 Carnegie Scholar, a trustee of the American University in Cairo, and the recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation and the Paul and Daisy Soros foundation, among others. He holds an AB from Brown and a Ph.D from Yale, both in political science.
Asaf Saban, Writer/Director, Delegation
Asaf Saban is a film director, writer and producer. His short films have been screened at major film festivals and received numerous awards. Outdoors (which screened at the 1st Boston Israeli Film Festival in 2019), his debut feature film, is an indie project which he also produced. The film received rave reviews and commercial success in Israeli cinemas. His second feature, Delegation, is an Israeli-German-Polish co-production that has received nominations, awards and praise at film festivals all over the world. .
Jonah Weinstein, Writer/Director, The Eighth Day (FreshFlix)
Jonah Weinstein is a filmmaker, actor and producer based in L.A. He currently works at Sony Pictures and was previously an associate producer on Awkwafina is Nora from Queens. He is a producer of the upcoming Jewish romantic comedy 31 Candles.
Sarah Rosen, Director/Producer, How to Make Challah (FreshFlix)
Sarah Rosen is a writer and director based in New York. Her films have played at the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, and other festivals worldwide. Her latest short doc How to Make Challah premiered at the 2024 New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center and was accepted into the Rooftop Films Summer Series. She has developed TV series with production companies in Tel Aviv and London. Sarah was the producer of the 2023 Other Israel Film Festival. Recently, she was a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Screenwriting (New York Foundation for the Arts), and attended Yaddo artist residency. She has a BA from Yale University in Film and studied film at FAMU (Prague).
Arielle Goldman, Writer/Director/Actor, Kiss My Ass (FreshFlix)
Arielle Goldman is an actress, writer & filmmaker. Arielle received her MFA from the NYU Tisch Graduate Acting Program. During her time at NYU she performed in the program’s three year long Chekhov Project and wrote her first play, a one woman show titled To Life, L’Chaim!. She received her BFA from The University of Michigan and is a proud alum of The Colbert Report internship program. Arielle’s most recent short film Kiss My Ass, a pro abortion inter-generational ghost story, won the Team Choice Award at the 2023 Through Women’s Eyes International Film Festival, screened at Bushwick Film Festival, the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival and now, the Boston Jewish Film Festival. Her first short film, Day One, was featured in The Future of Film is Female, Nitehawk Shorts Festival, New York Lift Off Festival and NoBudge. Her most recent theater credits include word premiere plays at Lincoln Center, George Street Playhouse. Previous television credits include The Knick and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Arielle also paints and illustrates with watercolor.
Elan Golod, Director, Nathan-ism
Elan Golod, since first being exposed to filmmaking during his military service in Israel, has worked in the New York film industry as an editor on a wide range of projects and as a short-form documentary director. After being part of the editing team on Mike Birbiglia’s film Sleepwalk with Me (Sundance, SXSW), Elan co-directed and edited the documentary short Mike Birbiglia: How to Make What This Is. While working on Nathan-ism, he also co-edited Birbiglia’s Don’t Think Twice (SXSW, Tribeca) and Maya Zinshtein’s documentary ‘Til Kingdom Come (DocAviv, IDFA).”
Simona Di Nepi, Moderator, Nathan-ism
Simona Di Nepi is the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Curator of Judaica at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she is responsible for building and displaying the Judaica collection, and for curating Intentional Beauty: Jewish Ritual Art from the Collection gallery. Originally from Rome, before moving to the United States Simona studied and worked in London and Tel Aviv for 25 years. She has filled curatorial roles—in both decorative arts and Old Masters—at the Victoria and Albert Museum, The National Gallery, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she cared for permanent collections and planned exhibitions. In Israel, she worked as curator at Anu: The Museum of the Jewish People and as Lecturer in Italian Renaissance art at Reichman University, Herzelyia.
Francesco Barone, Performer, Pepi Fandango
Francesco Barone is an award winning guitarist who has performed throughout the United States as a soloist and chamber musician. He has been presented at guitar festivals and societies in New England including the Connecticut Guitar Society, New England Guitar Society and Hartt School Guitar Festival. He has also performed nationally through the classical music startup Groupmuse. Dr. Barone was a prizewinner in the Philadelphia Classical Guitar Society Guitar Competition, was featured on a La Bella Strings sponsored concert and has had performances broadcasted on NPR. He received a DMA and MM from The Hartt School, University of Hartford where he studied with Richard Provost. He currently
teaches at Saint Anselm College and Wayland School of Music.
Rachel Elizabeth Seed, Director/Producer, A Photographic Memory
Rachel Elizabeth Seed, is a Los Angeles and Brooklyn-based nonfiction storyteller working in film, photography and writing. Her debut feature film A Photographic Memory premiered at True/False 2024 and was cited as “one of the best docs of the year” by RogerEbert.com and “an ingenious, meta doc” by Variety. Rachel’s work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Chicken + Egg Pictures, NYFA, Field of Vision, the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, the Maine Media Workshops, the Roy W. Dean grant, the Jewish Film Institute, Jewish Story Partners, and IFP/Gotham Labs, among others. Formerly a photo editor at New York Magazine, her photography has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography and she was a cameraperson on several award-winning feature documentaries including Sacred by Academy-Award winning filmmaker Thomas Lennon. Rachel’s writing has been published by No Film School, the Sundance Institute, and Talkhouse and she is co-founder of the Brooklyn Documentary Club, a thriving film collective with more than 300 members.
Betsy More, Moderator, A Photographic Memory + Anyuka
Dr. Betsy More is a historian and the Director of Programs at the Jewish Women’s Archive. She specializes in the history of feminism, work, and motherhood.
Shira Piven, Writer/Director, The Performance
Shira Piven is an American film and theater director and writer. Recently, Shira co-wrote and directed the feature film The Performance, based on a short story by Arthur Miller. Her first feature film Fully Loaded (2011) is an adaptation of the stage play she directed, about two single mothers on a wild and fraught night out in Los Angeles. Her second feature, Welcome to Me (2015), stars Kristen Wiig in a turn The New Yorker called “one of the best performances of the century so far.” Welcome to Me was also named a top 10 indie of 2015 by The National Board of Review and was a New York Times critic’s pick. Piven has also directed television episodes of Transparent. Piven has also adapted, directed, and composed music for more than 20 plays in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and D.C. More recently she directed Ionesco’s Victims of Duty at A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago, starring actor Michael Shannon. In 1999, shefounded Water Theater Company in New York, and led the groundbreaking physical improv theater group BurnManhattan. She also spent 10 years teaching with the Actor’s Gang theater’s Prison Project teaching ensemble theater and spontaneous writing to men and women in prison in California
Joshua Salzberg, Writer, The Performance
Joshua Salzberg is a screenwriter and filmmaker living and working in Los Angeles, CA. Salzberg got his start reading scripts for Ridley Scott and Alexander Payne before joining editing teams for film and television, with credits that include Step Brothers, The Other Guys, Funny People, and This Is 40. Salzberg went on to be the lead editor of Shira Piven’s Welcome to Me (National Board of Review Nominee), Paul Feig’s Other Space, Netflix’s Ibiza, and the Fox/Hulu series Welcome to Flatch. In addition to his writing and editing work, he directed the feature documentary Walking Man(Palm Beach Jury Prize, SLIFF Audience Award) and Co-Produced Dean (Tribeca Jury Prize) starring Kevin Kline and Gillian Jacobs. Salzberg has several projects in development, most notably two children who are running way over budget.
Jeffrey Bird Jr., Performer, The Performance
Jeffrey Bird, Jr. is a Boston based tap dancer, actor, and historian originally from Indianapolis, Indiana. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre and History from Butler University and a Masters Degree in US History from IUPUI. Jeffrey began dancing in 2004 and trained with Gregg Russell, Ryan Lohoff, Mark Goodman, Cory Finn, and Julie Sizemore. Since graduating from high school, Jeffrey has had the opportunity to train closely with Jenefer Miller, Suzy Guarino-Hall, and Cindy Hsu, and many others. Jeffrey joined the Circle City Tap Company in 2015 and served as the Artistic Director and Pre-Professional Company Director from 2018-2022. He performed in various shows with the company and directed several of the company’s shows, including the highly praised “Dear Diary” in 2019 Faculty credits include: Circle City Tap Festival, Tapapalooza Phoenix, Tapapalooza Seattle, and Tapapalooza Detroit! In the fall of 2022, Jeffrey co-founded Fourth Dimension Tap Company in Boston with Isla Niezgoda. Jeffrey believes that a full and rich tap education must include more than just technique, but also music theory and tap history. Much of his training and passion for these two aspects of tap he credits to his mentor Jenefer Miller.
Jillian Stern, Performer, The Performance
Jillian started dancing at age 13 at Joanne Langione Dance Center in Newton, MA where she fell in love with tap dancing. Since then, she has participated in numerous dance companies such as Drumatix Dance, Boston Tap Company and NEAT Dance Alliance performing all over New England and gaining experience with body percussion and drumming. She recently graduated with a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Tufts University and works full-time at VEIR – a clean tech startup. She’s looking forward to continuing her passion for tap dance and involvement with the Boston tap community as a member of Fourth Dimension!
Summer Thorpe, Performer, The Performance
Originally from Metro Detroit, Michigan, Summer began dancing at the age of three at Main Stage Center for the Arts. She studied all styles with a particular passion for tap and danced both recreationally and competitively. She was given the opportunity to assist and then teach tap at the studio as well. She joined the Detroit Tap Repertory under Denise Caston as an adolescent and continued her dance training under her, Regina Ihns, and Laurie Papovich. After high school, Summer attended Marymount Manhattan College where she minored in dance. While living in New York City, she also attended consistent classes at Broadway Dance Center to continue her tap training. Now based in Boston, Summer is a member of DanceWorks Boston and a Barre3 instructor outside of her day job.
Sandi DuBowski, Director/Producer, Sabbath Queen
Sandi DuBowski is the Director/Producer of Sabbath Queen, Director/Producer of Trembling Before G-D (BJFF 2001), 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, and PBS. In 2020, he was invited to join the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. DuBowski spearheaded a groundbreaking impact campaign with the award-winning Trembling Before G-D, personally conducting 850 live events for over 250,000 people, which changed the lives of countless individuals, their families, religious leaders, and communities around the world. Feature stories on the project appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NPR, The Globe and Mail, and BBC News. From 2009-2016, DuBowski worked with over 125 of the world’s best social justice documentaries as the Outreach Director of Doc Society’s Good Pitch. He is a Co-Founder of The Creative Resistance, a collective of media makers who create award-winning political ads and design. In the mid-1990s, he began his media and activism work at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, focused on the Christian right and the anti-abortion movement.
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, Film Subject, Sabbath Queen
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie (he/him) is the Founding Spiritual Leader of Lab/Shul NYC and the creator of Storahtelling, Inc. An Israeli-born Jewish educator, writer, and performance artist, he received his rabbinical ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 2016. Rabbi Amichai is a founding member of the Jewish Emergent Network, serves on the Leadership Council of the New York Jewish Agenda, is a member of the Global Justice Fellowship of the American Jewish World Service, the Advisory Council for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, an advisor to the Jerusalem Open House, and is a founding faculty member of the Reboot Network.
Rabbi Amichai has been hailed as “an iconoclastic mystic” by Time Out New York, a “rock star” by the New York Times, a “Judaic Pied Piper” by the Denver Westword, a “maverick spiritual leader” by The Times of Israel and “one of the most interesting thinkers in the Jewish world” by the Jewish Week. In June 2017 Rabbi Amichai published the JOY Proposal, offering a new response to the reality of Intermarriage and taking on a personal position on this issue, including his resignation from the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement.
In 2022 Rabbi Amichai began publishing Below the Bible Belt, a daily digital project extended over 42 months, critically queering and re-reading all 929 chapters of the Hebrew Bible.
Amichai is Abba to Alice, Ezra and Charlotte.
Idit Klein, Moderator, Sabbath Queen
Idit is a national leader for social change with more than 30 years of experience in the non-profit justice sector. Since 2001, she has served as the leader of Keshet, the national organization for LGBTQ equality in Jewish life. Idit built Keshet from a local organization with an annual budget of $42,000 to a national organization with offices in six states and a multi-million budget. Under her leadership, Keshet has mobilized tens of thousands of Jewish leaders to make LGBTQ+ equality a communal value and priority for action. Idit created national community building programs for queer Jewish teens and organized Jewish communities nationwide to join the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. In addition, she served as the executive producer of Keshet’s documentary film, “Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School” which inspired the formation of GSAs in Jewish schools around the country.
Prior to leading Keshet, Idit worked professionally in the Israeli-Palestinian peace movement and social justice sector in Israel. She also was a leader in the Israeli LGBTQ community and helped envision the Jerusalem Open House. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale University, Idit earned her Master’s in Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a focus on social justice education. She serves on the board of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable and publishes frequently in the Jewish and LGBTQ press. Idit has been honored by Jewish Women International, the Jewish Women’s Archive, Mayyim Hayyim, Brandeis University’s Hornstein Program in Jewish Professional Leadership, and the Forward as one of its ‘Forward 50,’ a list of American Jews who have made enduring contributions to public life. She lives in Boston with her family.
David Foley, Writer/Director, The Story of Jacob (FreshFlix)
David Foley is a Jewish film director living with cystic fibrosis in New York City. He grew up on Long Island and attended the SUNY Purchase Film Conservatory. Since college he has directed three short films and hopes to make the feature version of The Story of Jacob by the end of next year.
Amnon Carmi, Writer/Director, Yaniv
Amnon Carmi is a NYC-based director, producer and film educator with over a decade of experience in film production and animation.
Ben Ducoff, Writer/Actor, Yaniv
Ben Ducoff is a producer, actor, and film educator originally from Cleveland, Ohio. A graduate of the Boston University School of Theatre and The City College of New York, Ben is a founding faculty member at Motion Picture Technical High School in Queens.
