Author: Bijan Tehrani

The Polish American Film Society is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting a higher level of understanding of Polish culture through film. This organization showcases outstanding achievements of Polish cinema right in the heart of Hollywood. Each year, the Polish Film Festival of Los Angeles screens the finest selection of contemporary Polish cinema including full-length features, documentaries, animations, and shorts. Polish Film Festival provides an exciting venue for Polish filmmakers and actors to share their talents with an American audience. In an interview with Cinema Without Borders, Vladek Juszkiewicz, Director of the Polish Film Festival of Los Angeles talked about the…

“Journey from the Fall” is inspired by the true stories of Vietnamese refugees who fled their land after the fall of Saigon—and those who were forced to stay behind; the film follows one family’s struggle for freedom. Despite his allegiance to the toppled South Vietnamese government, Long Nguyen (as Long Nguyen) decides to remain in Vietnam. Imprisoned in a Communist re-education camp, he urges his family to make the escape by boat without him. His wife Mai (Diem Lien), son Lai (Nguyen Thai Nguyen) and mother Ba Noi (Kieu Chinh) then embark on the arduous ocean voyage in the hope…

Francois Truffart COLCOA Director and programmer after completing a Master’s degree in Politics in Paris in 1989 became the cultural attaché in charge of cinema promotion at the French Embassy in Hungary, Japan and the United States (Los Angeles) successively. He has also been the Director for the Cinefondation at Cannes Film Festival and represented the Cannes Film Market in the US. He is a programming consultant for festivals and also for film finance and international film distribution through his LA-based company Sorry Angels, Inc. In 2004 in Tokyo, he founded the Japanese music label, Cinemania 35. He has been…

Walea Constantinau is the founding director of the City and County of Honolulu’s Honolulu Film Office, an agency that is dedicated to providing economic stimulus and job creation to Oahu by growing and nurturing the film industry. She has 20+ years in the fields of marketing and advertising, 14 of which have been as a business development specialist in the area of film. Walea is a University of Hawaii graduate with Distinction in Communications, a degree that focused on emerging technologies with a minored in journalism. After graduationshe started working for a company that developed integrated application training curriculum for…

Michael Cory Davis, a native New Yorker, born in Brooklyn re-located to Los Angeles to pursue his career as what he terms a “Triple Threat” —actor, writer, and director. Michael has starred in numerous commercials, print campaigns and independent films, many of which have won numerous awards. He also had a recurring role on the daytime soap opera, The Bold & the Beautiful and starred in six high rated films for the sci-fi channel. In 2003, while starring in two feature-length films in Sofia, Bulgaria, Michael learned of the growing number of young girls and women forcefully taken from Bulgaria…

Yulie Cohen Gerstel was born and lives in Tel Aviv. Before starting to work in films, she studied sociology and anthropology at Tel Aviv University (BA) and received an MA with distinction in Communication Art from NYIT. During the 80’s Gerstel was working in films in New York and LA. Since 1988 and 1990 she is raising her 2 daughters. In 1993 she became an independent filmmaker. Her films include 8 x 30 min. documentaries. During 2000/2001 she co-produced RAMLEH and FOR MY CHILDREN with Michal Aviad. MY TERRORIST, Gerstel’s first long form documentary, (2002, Doc. 58 min.) was directed…

Before Flying Back to the Earth, that has received a Directors Guild of America Award in 2007, is a gracefully expressive journey into the lives of children living with leukemia at a pediatric hospital in Vilnius, Lithuania. The children enter into an alien world, bereft of color and warmth, but populated with kind strangers. Their new toys are invented out of stainless steel, and new friendships are formed in the crucible of the cancer ward. Inured to the routine of daily medication and meals that alternate between porridge and cabbage soup, the children dream of life beyond the clinic’s thick…

Two strangers having sex in a motel; they introduce themselves afterwards and begin talking—telling truths and lies. Matías Bize’s comedic and risqué film focuses on the lives of newly formed couple Daniela (Blanca Lewin) and Bruno (Gonzalo Valenzuela) and manages to include gripping drama and crowd-pleasing emotion into a small motel room. En la Cama is a fresh look at the vast distance between the sexes and the relationship between the two. Matias Bize, Didector of En la Cama was born in Santiago, Chile in 1979. Just before graduating from the “Escuela de Cine de Chile”, with only 23 years…

Aideen Ratteray Pryse is a founding member of Bermuda International Film Festival, Aideen has served as Festival Director since 1997. Aideen trained as an urban planner, having obtained a Bachelor’s degree at McGill University and a Master’s at the University of Waterloo. She was formerly employed with the Bermuda Department of Planning as Assistant Director (Administration & Control). In addition to her film festival work, she is a member of the board of directors of the Centre on Philanthropy. Cinema Without Borders: Please tell us about the Bermuda International Film Festival, how did it start and its approach to cinema…

In a world under the dark spell of wars and terrorism, credit card loans seem to be a distant threat. But when you find out about the millions of lives shattered by the endless greed of lenders, you wonder who is more dangerous: the fanatic terrorists that kill people because of their beliefs, or economic terrorists who suck the blood of the poor and those who are striving for American Dream? Maxed Out is a powerful visual statement about the disaster created by credit card lenders in our world today. There are sequences in the movie that bring total silence…