The Filmmaking Team

Born in Manhattan, filmmaker Jane Weiner grew up in the Arizona desert where she obtained her photojournalist press pass at 17 years old from the American Society of Magazine Photographers. After studying Biology and American History she finally majored in English Literature and Cinema at San Francisco State University. She left California in 1972 to begin shooting a documentary with her mentor, filmmaker Richard Leacock at M.I.T. For the next few years, she worked with non-profit groups providing film-photography-video workshops to children in inner-city and rural communities and was an Artist-in-Residence with the National Endowment of the Arts’ Artist-in-the-Schools Program at multiple sites in South Carolina, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Greenwich, Connecticut. She was a member of faculty at the New School’s Graduate Media Studies program in New York (1982-91) and Associate Professor at Newhouse School of Communication, Syracuse University (2002-04). She has served on international film festival juries and leads film production workshops in the USA, Europe, North Africa and Asia.
Since 1992, dividing her time between the U.S. and France, she’s authored, directed, produced and co-produced a number of award-winning of international films on both sides of the Atlantic.
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
Author / Director / Camera
A CAMERA THAT GOES ANYWHERE – The Legacy of American Documentary Cinema (2015) Festival and educational distribution –A one-hour behind-the-scenes story tracing the creation of cinéma-vérité documentary films in the 1950-60s with filmmakers Richard Leacock, Robert Drew, Terry Macartney-Filgate, D.A. Pennebaker and Albert Maysles. Festival screenings: Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain [Vimeo Password: Primary 1960]
AGRICULTURE BIO, CULTIVER L’AVENIR ? [What is the future of Organic Farming?] (2014) ARTE France –An 86-min reportage on economic risks of farmers, beekeepers, and wine makers in Burgundy, some are greatly committed (others, less so) to organic methods . Festival screenings & Awards: Grand prix Environmental Film-Festival du film documentaire de politiques publiques, Paris; Festival Caméras des champs, Ville-sur-Yron; Festival du Cinéma et Ruralité, Nannay; Festival de l’Oiseau et de la Nature, Abbevillle; Festival Ecofilm, Verouillet; APARR-Association des professionnels du cinéma et de l’audiovisuel de Bourgogne-Franche-Comté/Community Screenings
RICKY on LEACOCK (2012) LEF Foundation-NEA-NYSCA-Kickstarter USA –A 90-minute cinematic conversation (filmed over 35 years) with Richard Leacock, a founding father of documentary cinema vérité. Festivals screenings & Awards: Telluride USA; Flaherty USA; DOC-NYC USA; It’s All True Brazil; Special Mention at Biografilm Italy; Mill Valley USA; DOKFest Kassel, Germany; IDA DocuWeek LA & NYC, USA; Syracuse USA; Starz-Denver USA; Dok.Fest Munich, Germany; DocYard USA; Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain; Cinéma Vérité Festival, Tehran; World Documentary Awards-Official Selection Laurel. [Vimeo password: CINEMA VERITE]
LA CAMÉRA PASSE-PARTOUT – L’héritage du cinéma documentaire (2011) Ciné+ France –French version of A CAMERA THAT GOES ANYWHERE (above) Festival screenings: Cinéma du réel France; Cinequest, USA
AGENT ORANGE-Une guerre sans fin [AGENT ORANGE-War Without End] (2006) FRANCE 5/SBS Australia/IKON Holland –A 75-minute insider’s look at how a few lawyers take on a lawsuit representing millions of victims challenging the 37 corporations that made chemicals used in the Vietnam War.
LET OP! ZAKKENROLLERS [Beware of Pickpockets!] (2000) ZDF-ARTE Germany-France/NCRV Holland -A 60-min essay on the plague of pickpockets targeting tourists in Holland.
LE NUMÉRIQUE [The Digital Revolution] (1998) FRANCE 5 –52 minutes (4x13mins) young people explaining what the digital revolution actually is for an educational series targeting audiences made up of kids and grandparents, Allo la Terre.
CAROLINE (par Giacometti) (1995) SVT Sweden/PARIS PREMIÈRE France-CPB USA/European Broadcasting Union –A 5-min documentary with Alberto Giacometti’s muse-mistress including her own personal (never-before-seen) photos documenting her life together with the artist. Named ‘Best’ of the EBU-Arts series, WHO IS SHE? [Vimeo Password: Giacometti]
L’AGE D’OR DE PETIT PORTRAIT [The Golden Age of the Tiny Portrait] (Louvre), LE RÉOUVERTURE [The Reopening] (Jacquemart-André), LA CHÂSSE DE NIVELLES-TRÉSOR GOTHIQUE (Cluny) (1994) PARIS PREMIÈRE France –Three 15-min ‘creative’ reportages on museum and exhibition openings for the weekly series, Aux arts etcetera.
SEEN ELSEWHERE and YOUNG DIRECTORS (1992) Arts & Entertainment Revue USA –Two one-hour programs on international television and the first works by great directors
ALCANCIA FAMILIAR [Family Piggybank] and ¿ES ESTA PESTE PORCINA AFRICANA? [Identifying African Swine Fever] (1979) United Nations F.A.O. –Two half-hours on the outbreak of the highly contagious virus, African Swine Fever in Haiti and the Dominican Republic; one film for veterinarians to identify the malady in pigs, the other film for the community to understand how to control the spread of the disease. Released in cinemas throughout Latin America.
7th STREET DEPOT (1972) –16mm film B&W experimental 5-min short of young girl’s first arrival in the big city
Co-Author
LE MYSTÈRE DE LA DISPARITION DES ABEILLES [The Mysterious Disappearance of Bees] by Mark Daniels (2010) ARTE France/SBS Australia/CBC Canada –A 90-minute scientific investigation into the disappearance of bees. The TV broadcast garnered largest audience of any documentary on ARTE that year. Festival screenings & Awards: Pariscience France; L’Etoile SCAM France
Producer / Co-Producer / Associate Producer
RAVI SHANKAR–Between Two Worlds by Mark Kidel (2001) NHK Japan/ARTE France/NHK Norway/BBC London –A 90-minute portrait of the Indian sitar player and composer. Festival screenings & Awards: Telluride USA; FIPA Palme d’Argent, France; UNESCO Best Film; San Francisco Int’l USA; etc.
W.I.S.O.R-Robo-Welder by Michel Negroponte (2000) ZDF-ARTE Germany-France –A 90-minute experimental documentary about the creation of a space-age robot built to examine and repair NYC’s underground steam-pipe system.
HOME PAGE by Doug Block (1999) HBO USA/ZDF-ARTE Germany –A feature-length documentary about Justin Hall’s college adventures and painful mis-adventures while living and blogging in cyberspace. Cinema and DVD re-releases February 2019.
PAIN IS… by Stephan Dwoskin (1998) La Fondation de France/ZDF-ARTE Germany –An 80-minute experimental documentary essay about how each of us perceives and processes pain. Festival screenings & Awards: Grand Prix at Vue sur les Docs in Marseille, France plus screenings at 10 other international film festivals.
NO ACCIDENT by Michel Negroponte (1995) ZDF-ARTE Germany/ALIVE TV PBS –In a 26-minute experimental essay with poet and avant-garde legend, John Giorno as he takes the audience on an impressionistic tour of the underworld of the New York City subway.
DEATH BY DESIGN by Peter Friedman & Jean-François Brunet (1995) ZDF-ARTE Germany/ITVS-PBS –A feature-length essay on Apoptosis or ‘programmed cell death’. Festival screenings & Awards: Prix Europa, Berlin; San Francisco Golden Gate Award, USA; Jury Prize-Visions de Réel, Switzerland; etc. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrfJ31qs9Do]
DERNIÈRE NOUVELLE DE… [Latest News from…] (1994-95) co-produced with Patrice Barrat (Point du Jour, Paris) 13 episodes on TRANSIT ARTE Strasbourg, France -Personal stories told in ‘cinéma-direct’ style to journalists in ‘hot-spots’ around the world for a weekly current events show.
JUPITER’S WIFE by Michel Negroponte (1994) HBO/ITVS-PBS/BBC London –An intensely personal, warm and funny, feature-length portrait of a homeless woman living in Central Park, NYC. Festival screenings & Awards: Sundance Grand Jury Prize USA; EMMY Award USA; Santa Barbara USA; Vancouver Canada; Lussas France; etc.
SILVERLAKE LIFE-The View from Here by Tom Joslin & Peter Friedman (1993) Channel 4 London/ZDF ARTE Germany/POV-PBS –A feature-length video-diary documentary about living with and dying from HIV-AIDS. Festival screenings & Awards: Sundance Grand Jury Prize USA; L.A. Critics USA; Prix Italia Rome; Peabody USA; IDA USA; Berlin Film Festival Teddy Award; INPUT’96 Mexico, etc. In 2008, selected at IDFA-Amsterdam as one of ‘the best documentaries of our time.’ In 2018, special screenings at Lincoln Center, New York and the British Film Institute, London. In 2020, PBS (USA) re-licensed the film for streaming on their broadcast system.
I’M YOUR TYPICAL QUARTER by Mark Ritts (1988) PBS-SESAME STREET –A musical story for kids about how money flows through the economy. Immensely popular, it was re-broadcast 36 times i.e., twice a year for 18 years.
SHARKEY’S DAY by Laurie Anderson (1984) PBS-ALIVE-FROM-OFF-CENTER –An experimental blue-screen video in permanent museum collections at MoMA NYC and the Chicago Art Institute. Festival screenings: INPUT’84 France
DIRECTOR-PRODUCER (1975-1999) on CORPORATE FILMS AND MULTI MEDIA: American Express, Seagram’s, Oldsmobile, CPC International, AT&T, Bell Labs, GTE, Corning International (introduction of photochromic lenses), Price-Waterhouse, Lederle Pharmaceutical, Upjohn, Syntex, Becton-Dickinson, Schering-Plough, Johnson & Johnson, Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Chemical Bank, IBM, etc.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, Sharon Hammou
Sharon Hammou first began working with Jane 25 years ago on:
–DERNIERE NOUVELLE DE… for ARTE’s current events show TRANSIT, 13-episodes about‘latest news’ from hot-spots around the world. (1994). A few years later, with Jane, she co-authored: LE NUMÉRIQUE (1998) by Jane Weiner, for FRANCE 5, a 52-min program on the digital revolution for the educational series Allo la Terre.
Sharon co-produced/co-directed 3 independent films with Avi Hershkovitz: FANTASY-ANOTHER COUNTRY (1999); REALITY SHOW (2003); GALI-A School with No Walls (2006).
She’s also worked with other directors on 30 productions, including: MURDER ON A SUNDAY MORNING, by Jean Xavier de l’Estrade for HBO, FRANCE 2 & Channel 4 (UK), which was awarded an Academy Award Oscar for Best Documentary in 2002.
CINEMATOGRAPHER, Boris Carreté
After starting out as assistant cameraman for NHK-Japan in 1984, Boris Carreté has been cinematographer for independent feature-documentaries and television specials produced by major broadcasters all over the world. Boris joined Jane Weiner’s team in 1998 and LOSING SIGHT is the 7th film they’ve created together.
EDITORS, Larry Waxman and Monica Ross
Born and raised in the Bronx, Larry Waxman began working in television in New York in the late ’70s, starting out as editor, cameraman, and sound engineer before landing overlapping foreign assignments at CBS News and ABC News Bureaus in Paris, wherein, for over 20 years, he covered all major news events in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. He has won two Emmy Awards, a Peabody, and a Columbia-Dupont Award. Additionally, he edited the feature film, HEROI (2014) filmed in Kosovo, which was selected at the Montreal World Film Festival and awarded prizes at New York’s Albania Film Festival, and the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival.
With dual nationality (Argentina and Italy) and fluency in 5 languages, Mónica Ross is an accomplished visual artist working in cinema, television, advertising, photography, and mixed media. As filmmaker, she’s created over 30 short films and several feature-length works: a narrative BIG SPEAKERS (filmed in Lithuania) and two documentaries, LA VERITE NI SUFFIT PAS and FELICIANO CENTURION – ABRAZO INTIMO AL NATURAL. She has editor credit on 11 feature-length fiction and documentary films. Since her arrival in Paris a few years ago, in addition to making her own films, she’s been working on different stages of projects, production and postproduction, with American filmmakers Peter Friedman, Mark Rappaport, and Jane Weiner.
CONSULTING PRODUCER, Tony Lee
Dividing his time between the UK and the USA, Tony Lee has been making films for over 25 years and is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, author, and novelist. His main work focuses on natural history, science, the arts, psychology, and cinema. He has developed successful formats for television and has worked with high profile talent on both sides of the Atlantic. In the USA, Tony worked for National Geographic Television and Animal Planet. His natural history film, THE SECRET LIFE OF YOUR HOUSE, won the Special Jury Award at the 2015 Jackson Hole Wildlife Festival.
Brewster Pond Productions
Brewster Pond Productions LLC was formed in 2018 for the production of a multi-platform documentary project on the worldwide Myopia Epidemic.