![]() | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Joshua Seftel | |
---|---|
Born | |
Occupation(s) | Director, producer, screenwriter |
Years active | 1992–present |
Spouse | Erika Frankel |
Joshua Seftel (born July 17, 1968) is an Academy Award-nominated film director. Seftel began his career in documentaries at age 22 with his Emmy-nominated film, Lost and Found, about Romania's orphaned children. He followed this with several films including Stranger at the Gate , an Oscar-nominated short documentary executively produced by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai. His political campaign film Taking on the Kennedys was selected by Time Magazine as one of the “ten best of the year." Seftel also directed the underdog sports film The Home Team which premiered at SXSW, and a film about the Broadway revival of the musical Annie, It's the Hard Knock Life.
![]() | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(July 2021) |
Born in Schenectady, New York, Seftel graduated from Tufts University in the class of 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts in French Literature and having completed the required coursework in pre-medical sciences. During his time at Tufts University, he studied abroad in Paris, France at Wesleyan University in Paris as a student of French literature and history in 1988. He later attended Columbia University’s National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP) in New York City as a mid-career fellow in 2002-2003. He is Jewish. [1]
Seftel began his career in documentaries at age 22, receiving a National Emmy Nomination for his first film, Lost and Found: the Story of Romania's Forgotten Children, [2] a documentary about the plight of Romania's 120,000 orphaned and abandoned children. Seftel lived in orphanages for several weeks while shooting the film.
Old Warrior, (1994) Seftel's next film, is a documentary about the forgotten history of the Senior Citizens Power Movement and its founder, Frank J. Manning and received the Gold Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival and was broadcast on Public TV.[ citation needed ]
In 1996, Seftel produced Taking on the Kennedys [3] for the PBS series P.O.V. [4] which followed the campaign of Republican Party candidate Kevin Vigilante as he challenged Patrick J. Kennedy for a U.S. Congressional seat in Rhode Island. Taking on the Kennedys was named on TIME's list "The Best Television of 1996" [5] and has been anthologized in P.O.V.’s 20th Anniversary Collection DVD set.[ citation needed ]
Seftel's next film was Ennis’ Gift, an HBO documentary released in 2002 about learning differences, produced with Bill Cosby and wife Camille Hanks in memory of their late son Ennis, which featured Danny Glover, James Earl Jones, Anne Bancroft, Robert Rauschenberg, Charles Schwab and Caitlyn Jenner. [6] It received the 2002 Literacy in Media Award from the Literacy Network of Greater Los Angeles.[ citation needed ]
In 2010, Seftel produced Invitation to World Literature, a 13-part docu-series for WGBH that explored the themes of great literature. Subjects included composer Philip Glass, actress Kristin Chenoweth, actor Alan Cumming, Nobel-Prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, and author Francine Prose.[ citation needed ]
After his success with Ennis’ Gift, Seftel went on to direct and produce an hour-long PBS documentary, It's the Hard-Knock Life about the revival of the classic musical “Annie” being directed by Broadway legend, James Lapine in 2013. In 2014, his short documentary The Home Team premiered at the SXSW Film Festival and screened at numerous others including Sarasota, Nashville, and AFI Docs. The Home Team documented the last game of the season for the Murray State Racers in Murray, Kentucky.[ citation needed ]
2015 brought two very fruitful projects for Mr. Seftel: The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano, a 2016 New York Times Op-Doc, [7] as well as Zain's Summer. In The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano, which was premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Seftel and photographer, Phillip Toledano explore a series of ways that Toledano can die, using makeup and photographs to simulate potential outcomes. Zain's Summer follows a young Pakistani immigrant who has a very short time to adjust to life in America.[ citation needed ]
In 2016 Seftel directed and produced The Secret Life of Muslims, a series of 14 short documentary profiles and subject films on life as a Muslim-American today. This series features many prominent Muslim figures, including AJ+ correspondent Dena Takruri, US Olympic medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad, NYTimes bestselling author Reza Aslan, and founder and editor of Muslimgirl, Amani Al-Khatahbah, among many others. The Secret Life of Muslims is what Flavorwire called “a blast of clarity and human in the face of so much fear-mongering.” [8] The series has been distributed by Vox, USA Today, CBS Sunday Morning, The Huffington Post, and Upworthy.[ citation needed ]
In 2022, his film Stranger at the Gate was featured by The New Yorker , and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film. [9] [10]
Seftel moved into scripted film work with Breaking the Mold: The Kee Malesky Story [11] that told the fictional story of a young librarian's work to defeat toxic, asthma-inducing mold. The title character borrows the name of real-life NPR librarian Kee Malesky. The humorous film originated when Maryland Public Television asked Seftel to make a fictional piece about indoor air quality for middle-school aged children. The film played at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, the Newport International Film Festival, the Austin Film Festival and won the Jury Prize at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival. Breaking the Mold was shown at the One Reel Film Festival in Seattle where director Alexander Payne was a judge.[ citation needed ]
After seeing the film Breaking the Mold, director Alexander Payne put Seftel in touch with John Cusack and Mark Leyner. This led to Seftel directing the feature film War, Inc. , starring Cusack, and co-written by Leyner, Cusack, and Jeremy Pikser. War, Inc. premiered at the 7th Annual Tribeca Film Festival in April 2008. The movie is a political satire set in Turaqistan, a fictional country occupied by an American private corporation run by a former US Vice-President (Dan Aykroyd). The film also stars Hilary Duff and Marisa Tomei. [12]
Seftel has also worked in television, producing for ABC Turning Point, CBS Evening News, CBS Sunday Morning, PBS' Nova Science Now series and the award-winning public radio program This American Life . At CBS News, Seftel was brought in by then Executive Vice President Jonathan Klein (current President of CNN) to promote the use of the mini-DV format at the network.[ citation needed ]
For This American Life , Seftel produced a 1997 radio documentary entitled Trek [13] about an exploration of race and friendship in post-apartheid South Africa. He also produced a segment called “Still Life” in episode #2 “My Way” for This American Life [14] the television show, which aired on Showtime in 2007. Seftel also adapted NPR's This I Believe series from radio to public television for WGBH Boston. Seftel's short stories and articles have been featured on NPR, Salon.com, and The Seattle Times .[ citation needed ]
After Seftel's experience with WGBH and This American Life, he went on to produce Lidia Celebrates America in 2011-2012. In this mini-series produced for PBS, chef Lidia Bastianich and guests Stanley Tucci, Mo Rocca and Mario Batali explore how immigrants have preserved their culinary traditions. The project was nominated for both a James Beard Foundation Broadcast Media Award for Special/Documentary and a Silver Telly award.[ citation needed ]
![]() | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(July 2021) |
In reality television, Seftel directed the first two seasons of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and received a National Emmy Award Nomination for his work on the series.[ citation needed ] He also helped develop the A&E series Confessions of a Matchmaker, featuring Patti Novak, directing the series pilot, and served as Supervising Producer for the series. Seftel also developed the Emmy-nominated PBS children's reality game show Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman and directed the first season.
Seftel was awarded a National Arts Journalism Fellowship at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Columbia University School of the Arts in 2003. [15]
Sir Stephen Arthur Frears is an English director and producer of film and television often depicting real life stories as well as projects that explore social class through sharply drawn characters. He has received numerous accolades including three BAFTA Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph named Frears among the 100 most influential people in British culture. In 2009, he received the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He received a knighthood in 2023 for his contributions to the film and television industries.
Freida Lee Mock is an American filmmaker, director, screenwriter and producer. She is a co-founder of the American Film Foundation with Terry Sanders. Her documentary, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (1994) won an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary in 1995.
Garfield Kennedy is a documentary and fiction film-maker and producer based in Somerset, England. He was elected as a Liberal Democrat District Councillor for the Shepton West Ward of Mendip District Council in a by-election in July 2010.
William Gazecki is an American film director and former sound mixer best known for his documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement (1997), which earned a News & Documentary Emmy Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was awarded the International Documentary Association's Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award, and won awards at both the Melbourne International Film Festival and the Vancouver International Film Festival. Gazecki was nominated another three times for an Emmy award, and for an Academy Award in 1998.
Thomas Furneaux Lennon is a documentary filmmaker. He was born in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1968.
Ric Burns is an American documentary filmmaker and writer. He has written, directed and produced historical documentaries since the 1990s, beginning with his collaboration on the celebrated PBS series The Civil War (1990), which he produced with his older brother Ken Burns and wrote with Geoffrey Ward.
Paula S. Apsell is the television Executive Producer Emerita of PBS's NOVA and was director of the WGBH Science Unit.
Eric Daniel Metzgar is a filmmaker who lives and works in San Francisco.
Oren Rudavsky is an American documentary filmmaker specializing in work about individuals and communities outside the mainstream. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1979. Oren Rudavsky is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Rudavsky is currently producing the NEH funded American Masters documentary: Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People. He is also working on a documentary for a program called Witness Theater, which will chronicle the relationships formed between high school students and Holocaust survivors, culminating with a dramatization of the lives of the survivors. His films Colliding Dreams co-directed with Joseph Dorman, and The Ruins of Lifta co-directed with Menachem Daum, were released theatrically in 2016.
Jeanne Jordan is an American independent director, producer and editor. She was nominated for an Academy Award and has received the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival among many other awards.
Patricia Alvarado Núñez is an American television producer, director, and published photographer based in Boston, Massachusetts. She has created, produced, co-produced, executive produced, written and directed television and digitally distributed documentaries, music specials and series on social and cultural issues including the American Experience PBS primetime documentary Fidel in 2004, an episode of PBS Kids' Postcards from Buster which was nominated for a 2008 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children Series. She later served as the Creator and Series Producer of the WGBH series "Neighborhood Kitchens" which won an Emmy Award in 2014. Patricia was an Executive Producer of "Sing That Thing," an amateur choral group competition television series which ran for four seasons by broadcaster WGBH. Alvarado Núñez is currently the Executive Producer of WGBH's World Channel online, television, and podcast series "Stories from the Stage" which broadcast nationally on the PBS network and won two Webby Awards.
Slawomir Grünberg is a Polish-born naturalized American documentary producer, director and cameraman.
Tod Lending is an American producer, director, writer and cinematographer. His work has aired on ABC, PBS, HBO, Al Jazeera English, CNN, A&E; has been screened theatrically and awarded at national and international festivals; and has been televised internationally in Europe and Asia. He is the president and founder of Nomadic Pictures, a documentary film production company based in Chicago, and the Executive Director of Ethno Pictures, a nonprofit film company that produces and distributes educational films.
Nina Rosenblum is an American documentary film and television producer and director and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America. Italian Fotoleggendo magazine said Rosenblum “is known in the United States as one of the most important directors of the investigative documentary”.
Elizabeth Deane is a writer, producer and director of documentary films for PBS, specializing in American history. She is based primarily at WGBH-TV in Boston, with work ranging from presidential politics to biographies and musical history.
Vivian Kleiman is a Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker. She has received a National Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Research and executive produced an Academy Award nominated documentary.
Sabrina Schmidt Gordon is an American documentary filmmaker. She is known for producing and editing films on cultural and social issues. In 2018, she was invited to become a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
Sandy McLeod is an independent filmmaker. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America and has been nominated for an Academy Award.
Truman is a 1997 two-part television documentary film about Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President of the United States. Produced by PBS for The American Experience documentary program, it recounts Truman's life from childhood to his presidency. Written, co-produced, and directed by David Grubin, the film first aired on PBS in two parts on October 5 and 6, 1997.
Jon Shenk is an Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary film director and director of photography, known for his films Lead Me HomeAthlete A, An Inconvenient Sequel, Audrie & Daisy,The Island President, Lost Boys of Sudan.