The Israeli Film Festival on Public Television  was created by Cynthia Zeiden, Zeiden Media and  Zygote Films. The mission is to bring real stories of Israeli people through the eyes of Israeli filmmakers to American audiences via public television stations to broaden the cultural knowledge they have of Israel and the Israeli people.  A second set of Israeli films will be offered to PTV stations in 2011.

 

 Cynthia Zeiden, Zeiden Media, Distribution/Marketing/Outreach-Cynthia is former National Trustee and President of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She is currently Activities/Programs Chair for the San Francisco/Northern California Chapter.

 Cynthia manages marketing and distribution for many public television programs including, "MoneyTrack," "The Remarkable Red Hat Society," "Chevalier-Maurice & Me," "What's Up in the Universe?", "Tommy Tang's Let's Get Cooking," "IPO: Investing Pays Off," "High Tech Home," "Digital Journey" and many others.

She was the Program Manager at KCSM-TV, a PBS station in San Mateo, CA (1995-1999) and the Director of Broadcast Operations at WYCC-TV, a PBS station in Chicago (1992-1995).

Cynthia has a Master's degree in Broadcast Management from the University of Tennessee and a Bachelor's degree in Media Studies from Northern Illinois University.

 

The Israeli Film Festival on Public Television’s premiere season features the films of filmmaker Duki Dror: Raging Dove, The Journey of Vaan Nguyen and My Fantasia. Dror's works bear the hallmark of a personal obsession with roots and divided identities - be it a Vietnamese refugee growing up in Israel, a Palestinian-Israeli world-champion boxer, or his own story - as the Israeli-born son of Iraqi-Jewish expatriate.

Born in Tel Aviv and educated at UCLA and Columbia College in Chicago, Duki Dror is a critically-acclaimed filmmaker. His films deal with issues of identity: cultural, political, ethnic and social crises of individuals in a post-modern world. Dror's films are internationally distributed.

"Duki Dror, one of the most fertile young directors in Israel today, consistently deals with the theme of displacement in its different configurations, thus, revealing the ever changing faces of today's Israel...
It may be sometimes difficult to identify a unique voice, the voice of one who follows a unique stylistic and thematic line in his art, the voice of the auteur. Duki Dror's voice is as such - a distinctive voice who continues a tradition of auteur filmmakers with personal statement."
(from the article "Duki Dror's Journey of the Displaced", (Dr. Yael Munk, "The Cinematheque")