 | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(September 2017) |
Debra Gonsher Vinik, is an American producer and writer of documentary films. [1]
| This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(September 2017) |
Debra Gonsher Vinik, is an American producer and writer of documentary films. [1]
Dr. Gonsher Vinik worked as a producer at Bravo Magazine and was head of production for both CBS/Fox Video and Scanline Video. She earned her Ph.D. in Theatre Criticism from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and is currently a Professor and Coordinator of the Liberal Arts & Sciences Program at Bronx Community College at the City University of New York. [2]
She is based in New York. [3]
Dr. Gonsher Vinik has produced and written 21 documentaries, twelve of which have been nominated for Emmy awards and six of which have won the honors: And The Gates Opened (2007), The Eternal Light (2008), Yearning To Belong (2009), Divine Prescription: Stories of Faith, Health and Community (2013), Beauty of their Dreams (2017), Brightness of Noon, part II (2019). Her films have appeared at festivals worldwide. Her latest work is Attention Must Be Paid: Women Lost in the Opioid Crisis a 90-minute feature documentary has been shown at live conferences and streamed to thousands in 2022, prior to airing as an expanded 2-part series on ABC, entitled Listen to the Silence.
Her films generally focus on social justice issues from a multi-faith perspective and address such subjects as community and inclusion for disabled people, hunger in America, intimate partner violence, healthcare, immigration, and advocating for girls' education worldwide.
Vinik has written two books and one textbook:
Awakenings is a 1990 American drama film based on the 1973 non-fiction book of the same name. Directed by Penny Marshall, it was written for the screen by Steven Zaillian, who based his screenplay on Oliver Sacks's 1973 memoir of the same name. It tells the story of neurologist Dr. Malcolm Sayer, based on Sacks, who discovers the beneficial effects of the drug L-DOPA in 1969. He administers it to catatonic patients who survived the 1919–1930 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. Leonard Lowe and the rest of the patients are awakened after decades, and have to deal with a new life in a new time. Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson, John Heard, Penelope Ann Miller, Peter Stormare and Max von Sydow also star in the cast. Awakenings was produced by Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, who first encountered Sacks's book as undergraduates at Yale, and optioned it a few years later. The film was a critical and commercial success, earning $108.7 million on a $29 million budget, and was nominated for three Academy Awards.
Debra Lynn Winger is an American actress. She starred in the films An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Terms of Endearment (1983), and Shadowlands (1993), each of which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Winger won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress for Terms of Endearment, and the Tokyo International Film Festival Award for Best Actress for A Dangerous Woman (1993).
Debra Hill was an American film producer and screenwriter, best known for her professional partnership with John Carpenter.
Darnell Martin is an American television and film director, screenwriter, and film producer.
Trembling Before G-d is a 2001 American documentary film about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith. It was directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski, an American who wanted to compare Orthodox Jewish attitudes to homosexuality with his own upbringing as a gay Conservative Jew.
Debra Granik is an American filmmaker. She is most known for 2004's Down to the Bone, which starred Vera Farmiga, 2010's Winter's Bone, which starred Jennifer Lawrence in her breakout performance and for which Granik was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and 2018's Leave No Trace, a film based on the book My Abandonment by Peter Rock.
Debra Chasnoff was an American documentary filmmaker and activist whose films address progressive social justice issues. Her production company GroundSpark produces and distributes films, educational resources and campaigns on issues ranging from environmental concerns to affordable housing to preventing prejudice.
Yearning to Belong is a documentary about the Abayudaya Jews in Uganda and their struggle to be recognized by the international Jewish community.
Jacob J. Schacter is an American Orthodox rabbi. Schacter, a historian of intellectual trends in Orthodox Judaism, is University Professor of Jewish History and Jewish Thought and Senior Scholar at the Center for the Jewish Future at Yeshiva University.
The first openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender clergy in Judaism were ordained as rabbis and/or cantors in the second half of the 20th century.
Naamah Kelman-Ezrachi is an American-born Reform rabbi who was named as Dean of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion campus in Jerusalem starting in July 2009. In 1992, Kelman made history as the first woman in Israel to become a rabbi when she received her rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk.
Lilly Rivlin is an American- Israeli journalist, writer, and filmmaker in the genre of documentary/ political films on women's issues.
Diva Communications, Inc. is an programming and production company based in New York City. It specializes in production of film that explores social justice issues through a faith-based and humanistic lens. Founded by Dr. Debra Gonsher Vinik in 1985, Diva Communications has produced 20 documentaries, multiple short-from videos, and video series for use in the broadcast, cable, internet, and marketing industries. Diva Communications has won Emmy Awards for 6 of these films.
A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World is a 2007 American documentary film written, directed, and produced by Lionel Friedberg. It was distributed by Jewish Veg, then known as the Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA). The film centers on Jewish teachings about caring for the planet, treatment of animals, and the environment, with a focus on Jewish vegetarianism. Interviews with rabbis, activists, and scholars are interspersed with footage and stills illustrating the points being discussed.
Maggie Hadleigh-West is an American filmmaker and activist.
OpenDor Media, formerly Jerusalem U, is a non-profit organization dedicated to film-based Jewish and Israel education. OpenDor Media produces feature-length films, short videos, social media content and educational resources.
Leslie Harris is an American film director, screenwriter and producer.
Abby Chava Stein is an Israeli-American transgender author, rabbi, activist, blogger, model, and speaker. She is the first openly transgender woman raised in a Hasidic community, and is a direct descendant of Hasidic Judaism's founder, the Baal Shem Tov. In 2015, she founded one of the first support groups nationwide for trans people with an Orthodox Jewish background who have left Orthodox Judaism.
Robin Saex Garbose is an American filmmaker and theatre director. Following an early career directing several off-Broadway plays and episodes of the shows Head of the Class and America's Most Wanted, Garbose embraced Orthodox Judaism and founded the Kol Neshama Performing Arts Conservatory, a summer camp and arts conservatory providing an artistic outlet for teenage Orthodox girls. With Kol Neshama, she has produced several projects, including the films A Light at Greytowers (2007), The Heart That Sings (2011), and Operation: Candlelight (2014). Her projects have been screened at the Museum of Tolerance, the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Cinematheques, and the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.
Marcia Jarmel is a director, producer, and long-standing member of the Bay Area documentary community. She was born and raised in suburban New Jersey and attended high school and college in Boulder, Colorado, where she studied journalism. She learned filmmaking through hands-on experience working on others people's projects. She moved to the Bay Area in 1988 and six years later, co-founded the San Francisco-based production company, PatchWorks Films, with husband-collaborator Ken Schneider. She has directed, produced, and managed impact for their films ever since.