ETHAN ISENBERG, DIRECTOR / PRODUCER.
Lonely Man of Faith is Ethan's first documentary film.
Ethan studied documentary filmmaking at Columbia
University and New York Film/Video Arts, and
multimedia at the University of Southern California.
He has both a BA in English Literature, with a
concentration in Film Studies, and a BS in Computer
Science, from the University of Pennsylvania. Before
embarking on a career in filmmaking, Ethan worked as
a computer programmer. He also spent two years
studying in Israel, in yeshiva (advanced Jewish
educational institutes). Ethan currently lives with his
wife, Nili, and son, Ami, in Los Angeles.
MARILYN NESS, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER.
Marilyn Ness is a two-time Emmy Award winning
documentary film producer with ten years of
experience. Before opening her own production
company, Necessary Films, Ness collaborated with
director Ric Burns on several films, including the
series New York: A Documentary Film, and biographies
of Eugene O’Neill, Andy Warhol, and Ansel Adams.
She associate produced Meltdown at Three Mile Island
and Surviving the Dust Bowl for the Emmy Award
winning historical documentary series, The American
Experience, on PBS. Other credits include National
Geographic, Court TV, and Aviva Kempner’s The Life
and Times of Hank Greenberg.
TOVAH FELDSHUH, NARRATOR.
For her work on the New York stage, from Yentl to
Sarava! to Lend Me A Tenor to Golda’s Balcony, Tovah
has earned four Tony nominations for Best Actress and
won four Drama Desk Awards, four Outer Critics
Circle Awards, the Obie, the Theatre World Award and
the 2003 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Actress. On
October 3, 2004, Golda’s Balcony became the longest-
running one-woman show in the history of Broadway.
Tovah just finished a successful run at the Paper Mill
Playhouse as the starring role in Hello Dolly. Besides a
variety of title roles in theater, she had been featured
in a number of television shows and feature films,
including Law And Order, Kissing Jessica Stein,
Holocaust, The Amazing Howard Hughes, Citizen Cohn, A
Walk On The Moon, Happy Accidents, and many others.
CHERYL VAN GRUNSVEN, CO-PRODUCER.
Cheryl has a BS in Cinema and Photography from
Ithaca College. After writing, directing, and producing
her own films in college, she interned at Feury/Grant
Productions and PBS' Emmy Winning Series, American
Masters, at WNET/Channel 13. At American Masters,
she worked first as a Production Assistant on Robert
Capa: In Love and War, then as an Associate Producer
on both A Vision of Empire: Henry Luce and Time Life's
America and Judy Garland: By Myself. Following that,
Cheryl was the Research Associate for Destination
America, a David Grubin Productions series on
immigration. She is currently involved in several
documentary projects.
MIKE DEWITT, WRITER.
Mike DeWitt has produced more than twenty-five
hours of national television programming for PBS,
A&E, History Channel, Discovery Channel, and
Animal Planet. DeWitt recently wrote and produced
two episodes for the new PBS series, AIR: America's
Investigative Reports. In 2002, DeWitt won a New York
Emmy Award and Edward R. Murrow Award for his
documentary Taking the Fifth, about the race for
Congress in Connecticut's Fifth District. In 2001, he
produced the two-hour History Channel special Raise
the Alabama! about marine archaeologists efforts to
excavate the legendary Confederate warship CSS
Alabama off the coast of Northern France. DeWitt's
critically-acclaimed documentary Delta Jews aired
nationally on PBS in 1998. He has produced and
written celebrity profiles for A&E's Biography series,
and produced 15 episodes of Discovery's Justice Files.
In 2003 he was a producer of Our Genes/Our Choices, a
nationally-broadcast forum on genetics and social
policy for the PBS/Fred Friendly Seminars at the
Columbia University School of Journalism.
DAVID A. FORD, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY.
Over the last decade, David has worked on numerous
commercial, narrative and documentary films. His
credits include Executive Producing and DP'ing
GidyUp! On The Rodeo Circuit, which appeared on Logo,
as well as being cameraman on two Emmy Award
winning documentaries: Steeplechase Films’ New York
and Florentine Films’ Divided Highways. His lighting
designs can be seen in four feature-length
independent films. David also teaches
Cinematography in the Columbia University Graduate
Film Department.
DON BERNIER, EDITOR.
Don received a graduate degree in Media Study from
SUNY-Buffalo and has been involved with
documentary media for over a decade. He directed and
edited In a Nutshell: A Portrait of Elizabeth Tashjian,
which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival and
was nominated for a 2005 Gotham Award. Other
editing credits include Gary and the Romans, a verite
documentary selected for the 2005 IFP Market. Don has
also served as associate editor on several PBS programs
including Stephen Ives' Reporting America at War and
David Grubin's Marie Antoinette. Don is currently
editing an episode of The Jewish Americans for David
Grubin Productions.
MICHAEL BACON, COMPOSER.
Michael has written original scores for numerous films
and television shows, many of which have won Emmy
and Academy Awards. He was awarded an Emmy for
his score for The Kennedy's, and both the BMI
Television Music Award and The Chicago
International Film Festival Gold Plaque Award for his
music for LBJ. Michael was also nominated for an
Emmy for his score for David Grubin’s Young Dr.
Freud. Other films he has scored include David
Grubin’s Destination America, Abraham and Mary
Lincoln: A House Divided, Napoleon, RFK, and Secret Life
of the Brain; Kuhnhart Productions’ African American
Lives; Barbara Kopple’s The Hamptons; Peter Jennings'
The Century; Charles Guggenheim’s Berga: Soldiers of
Another War; the feature films Losing Chase, Loverboy,
and Red Betsy; as well as Ernest Shackleton's Voyage of
Endurance, TR: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt, Truman,
Reagan, America 1900, The Wright Stuff, Carnegie,
MacArthur, and King Gimp. Michael has a degree in
music from Lehman College where he studied
composition and orchestration with John Corigliano.
He lives in New York City with his wife, Betsy, and
son, Neil, and enjoys playing squash and ice hockey.
JOSHUA BLECHNER, PROJECT RESEARCHER.
Josh has a Master of Arts in Comparative History,
Bachelor of Arts in History, and Minors in Film
Studies and Near Eastern Judaic Studies from Brandeis
University. He has worked as an archive assistant at
the National Center for Jewish Film, and as an
assistant editor on I, Gombrowitcz, for ARTE and TV
Polski. He also was a production assistant on Patriot's
Day, for PBS' American Experience, and worked with
producer/ director Marian Marzynski, editing both
Anya: In and Out of Focus and Frontline's A Jew Among
the Germans. He currently works at A&E Television
Networks.
