Productions

For more than four decades, we have avoided being labled, as “Historical; Art; Industrial; etc. - Producers”. Instead, we have chosen to document the many fascinating aspects of our society, in as many inventive ways, as possible.

Our stories are about people, institutions and events in the Arts; Dance; Music; Business and Industry; Education; Health; Science and Medicine; Journalism; Crime and Punishment; our History and our Future.

A Sampling from that range of subjects and hundreds of films, follows:

AMERICA 9 Min;
pgp inc/Magnum Films
This photo-animated production orchestrated to a special composed version of “America the Beautiful”, was the centerpiece of a traveling exhibition of photographs by Americas’ greatest photographers titled “America In Crisis”. Gold Medals from the Atlanta International Film Festival and the Moscow Film Festival.

THE AMERICAN LEGEND 29 min
CBS News, Public Affairs Department
This program was a kaleidoscopic look at the American’s rich legacy of folk music with Oscar Brand; its folk legends, art and crafts. This series pilot received the Thomas Alva Edison Mass Media Award..

AT THE MET: CURATORS CHOICES 29 Min
ABC Video Enterprises/ The Metropolitan Museum of Art
This film used an exhibition in which Curators have spent no more than $5000 for works of art, as the vehicle to explore the interior world of the Curator, Who are they and how do they think and why to they make the decisions they do to add to the Museum’s collection.

AT THE MET: GARDENS & FLOWERS 29 Min
ABC Video Enterprises/ The Metropolitan Museum of Art
How flowers and gardens have inspired artists throughout history is explored in this film from paintings, pottery and the huge floral displays in the main hall, to the living medieval garden and unicorn tapestry in the Met’s Cloisters.

AT THE MET: OLMSTEAD AND CENTRAL PARK 29 Min
ABC Video Enterprises/ The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Using an exhibit in the Museum about landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead as a springboard, this film explored how Olmstead created the work of art around the Metropolitan Museum - Central Park.

AT THE MET: THE TOURNAMENT 29 Min
ABC Video Enterprises/ The Metropolitan Museum of Art
One of the world’s largest collections of arms and armor from the age of chivalry is located in the Met. The film highlights the jewels of the collection and the role of the Knights and the Tournament The film dispels old myths while giving surprising meaning to others.

THE BALLET 16 Min
New York City Ballet Company
In a unique blending of still photography, shot by the gifted photographer, Ernst Haas, high-speed photography and conventional filming, this film is a beautiful, visual essay about the creation of a ballet dancer, transformed from a child at the bar to the elegance of a finished dancer. This wordless film, built to the music of Bizet’s Symphony in C, concludes with the entire New York City Ballet Company on stage, choreographed by George Balanchine.

BEGINNINGS 3 Min
Sesame Street/Children’s Television Workshop
This film uses clay and a potter and her wheel to explore the idea.that all things have a beginning and often change their shapes in time,

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS 29 Min
CBS News & Public Affairs
The first fully photo-animated film on the Network. Torn between the government’s effort to get Native Americans off their reservations and into the cities of the country and their strong cultural ties to their Tribes, we moved onto the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to live with and document the conflicted life for these young Oglala Sioux and their families.

CBS REPORTS: THE BUSINESS OF HEROIN 60 Min
This film traveled from the poppy fields of the Far East to the laboratories in Marseille to the bust of a drug dealer on the streets of New York, filmed with hidden cameras.

CHANGE: HANDLE WITH CARE 28 Min
Fortune Magazine
Featuring the country’s leading business and industrial leaders, journalists and social critics, this film challenged the businessman to respond to the forces of change in the country.

CHINA: A PORTRAIT OF THE LAND 18 Min
Encyclopedia Britannica Films
Gaining access to China, which had been closed to western journalists for years, through a Swiss colleague, Rene Burri, we were able to explore six major regions. They included Manchuria, North China, South China, Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang Province, and Tibet.

CHINA’S VILLAGES 18 Min
Encyclopedia Britannica Films
A portrait of life in three villages, one south of Shanghai, the second in Sinkiang Province and the third in Mongolia.

CHINA’S INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 18 Min
Encyclopedia Britannica Films
Explored the changes in China’s efforts to modernize its industrial production and the early failures resulting from Mau Tze-Tung's policies.

CLINICAL DEPRESSION:
University of Pennsylvania/Pfizer Laboratories
Studies showed that many primary care physicians were not recognizing that the signs and symbols of Depression. We were asked for a communication solution and we recommended using television as a medium to reach the physicians. We created a course that included, a monograph on the History of Depression and two documentaries. The Department of Psychiatry of the University of Pennsylvania created a treatment manual and an exam for the physicians that enabled them to earn continuing education credits. 18 thousand Physicians took the course.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES 29 Min
To tell the story of 20 centuries of painful misunderstanding about the true nature of depression, we filmed evocative scenes, in Greece, Italy, Germany, France, Belgium and the United States, to represent periods of that history, with many different voices reading from works that reflected the attitudes towards depression of that time – and treatment.

CLINICAL DEPRESSION: CURRENT CONCEPTS 29 min
University of Pennsylvania/Pfizer Laboratories
Psychiatric experts and their current patients and those who have seen “light at the end of the tunnel” are all part of this tough, but encouraging and hopeful documentary

COMPANY FOR LUNCH 26 Min
Xerox
The goal was to convey to viewers that Xerox was a company you could bet on for your future. We chose an annual meeting held in the country’s largest circus tent to tell their story. With unlimited access, and using our photo-animated technique we had a team of six of the world’s finest photographers and four sound reporters to document the expected and unexpected dramatic confrontations with some shareholders. We had 28 hours of sound and 10,000 photographs to create the film. The result was filled with some very funny moments and a great portrait of its President, Joe Wilson. The New York Times wrote: “Xerox should make extra copies of this marvelous film”.

THE COOL REBELLION 29 Min
CBS News, Public Affairs Department
To tell the story of the “Beat Generation” we lived in and documented the scene in Greenwich Village in New York City, Venice Beach in Los Angeles and North Beach in San Francisco, meeting with poets, musicians, artists and leaders, like Alan Ginsberg and Kenneth Rexroth. We also met with their followers, living in their shadows, who were opting out of the “straight” world.

THE DEATH PENALTY AND CARYL CHESSMAN 29 Min
CBS News, Public Affairs Department
An examination of the pros and cons of capital punishment, with special focus on Caryl Chessman, who had been sentenced to death despite having committed no capital crime. The program included a chilling visit to the Death cells in San Quentin Prison and the gas chamber, in which Chessman was executed one month after the program aired.

GRAND ROUNDS 29 Min
CBS News, Public Affairs Department
The first pilot program on the network that was dedicated to reporting on health and medicine. It included a segment on organ transplants from Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, the first hospital in the United States to have a successful human organ transplant.

HEALTHY LIVING TV Series 12 Hours
Many of the physicians and nurses of the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, one of the country’s 100 leading Medical Centers, are the stars in this series that puts a human face on medical care and information. The series captures the drama of the Emergency Room to watching an Interventional Radiologist enter the brain of a wide-awake 79-year-old woman to prevent an inevitable stroke.

YOU’RE NOT ALONE 14 Min
TO LIVE 16 Min
Cooley’s Anemia Foundation
Thalassemia is the name of a group of genetic blood disorders. The red blood cells do not form properly and cannot carry sufficient oxygen. The result is anemia that begins in early childhood and lasts throughout life, which for a long time, very brief. Our series of films was designed to inform the public raise funds for research and provide comfort and hope to families confronted with this problem.

HIGH RISK YOUNG PEOPLE 5 Min
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
A powerful statement underscoring the frustration of young men and women fighting drug addiction and health issues and the many different agencies and clinics they have to go to, to find help. The film was used to announce The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s “one stop” health program for ;young people, in Monte Fiore Hospital in New York City.

INDIAN CHILDREN GAMES 6 Min
Sesame Street/Children’s Television Workshop
Kids are kids wherever they may be. They may call it street hockey in New York City and shinny stick on the Santa Anna Pueblo in New Mexico, but, it produces the same excitement in both places and conveys the message that there are more things we share in life than the differences.

INDIAN SUMMER 29 Min
Ford Foundation
This film documents the life of one family living on the Santa Anna Pueblo in New Mexico. The main focus is with the children, their friends and very special grandfather. It’s a summer of fun and work, helping their Dad build a new room on their room and tending the garden where Grandpa shows them how to use his “magic, corn growing powder. He also takes his grandchildren to ancient Kivas and teaches them to dance and sing native songs.

INDIAN TO INDIAN 24 Min
INDIAN FOR A CHANGE 25 Min
US Department of Labor
These films profiled Native Americans from tribes and pueblos in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona and California who have pursued their education and have achieved responsible jobs in many different professions. The films were designed to encourage other Native Americans to take the same paths.

KEEP ME SAFE 14 Min
Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital
The death of a nurses’ baby resulting from a boy friend who tried to quiet the child’s crying by violently shaking it, serves as the dramatic story of the Shaken Baby Syndrome. The message that care must be taken in the choice of caregivers is unmistakable. The film is part of an ongoing educational program in Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital in Loma Linda, California and others medical institutions around the country for professionals and Mothers.

IT ONLY TAKES A MINUTE Series of :60 &:30 spots
Prevent Child Abuse California
The line “It only takes a minute” – to listen to a chlld, was the key phrase for a public service campaign to prevent child abuse, The key performers were non-professional children talking about the things in their lives that make them feel secure and loved.

LANDSCAPE 28 Min
The Wall Street Journal
This portrait of The Wall Street Journal took the unusual approach of not focusing on the “business” newspaper, but rather’ the quality of its marvelous writing throughout its pages, in essays, reviews, off beat funny stories and outstanding profiles of people and places. Six stories were selected, and they included “The most innovate town in America” and a beautiful essay of a reporter searching his family’s roots in Minnesota.

LIFE IN MOTION 7 Min
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
“Life in Motion” tells how one group of teachers came together to revitalize their classrooms. They participated in a summer biology institute of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, supported by HHMI. Short and inspirational, the film shows how teachers can work with scientists to help students discover the excitement of today’s biology

MATING & DATING AT THE SAN DIEGO ZOO 8 Min
IBM
To insure that the beautiful, baby Snow Leopard at the San Diego Zoo will never be mated with any relative, a data bank of endangered species and their locations, has been created and is stored in IBM computers in Zoos located throughout the world

MORE THAN A DREAM: Series 1 ½ Hours
BEING YOUR OWN BOSS
RAISING THE MONEY
RUNNING YOUR OWN BUSINESS
US Department of Labor
The most comprehensive series on entrepreneurship ever played on PBS. The series debuted at a White House Conference on small business and featured President Jimmy Carter - as a peanut farmer.

MUSEUM WITHOUT WALLS;
HENRY MOORE IN NEW YORK 29 Min
Blue Hill Cultural Center
George & Virginia Abla, avid collectors of sculptures by Henry Moore lent New York City, 15 monumental works by the sculptor, to be located in public places, like Central Park and the Bronx Zoo. This film documents that experience, from the first installation, the confrontation with the public to Henry Moore’s reaction, filmed at his home in England, to those who called his works abstract. “Abstract, abstract? You can knock your head against them. I don’t know what they’re talking about!”

TO PROTECT A CHILD 25 Min
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The documentation of a 10-city demonstration project, conducted over several years, was designed to determine what kind of dental program would be best to protect children from dental decay. The use of fluorides and sealants were among the preventive treatments studied.

NOT SO WILD A DREAM 27 Min
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
This film features minority men and women who have achieved great success in the sciences, like the first Native American, a Navaho, to have earned a PhD from the University of California, Berkley, The goal was to encourage other minorities to continue their education and consider science as a career. In addition to PBS telecasts, over 50,00 copies of the film were requested by schools throughout the country.

NOW GOD SPEAKS TZELTAL 23 Min
Wycliffe Bible Translators
From the jungles of Chiapas in Mexico, we tell the story of two women, one a nurse and the other a linguist, who creates a written language, where none existed, for the Mayan Tzeltal Indians. We capture the last stage of 20 years of work, when “the word” - the Bibles - are flown in from Mexico and given to the Indians and the woman leave to start all over again with another tribe in Columbia, South America. The films used a combination of still photographs, by Cornell Capa, and live action footage.

PEOPLE WITH PURPOSE 18 Min
IBM
The theme for the year was productivity. We proposed that the question to follow should be, “To what extent are we using the earth’s resources productively”. We filmed three stories to get that answer. In Mexico, we filmed Norman Borlaug, who won a Nobel prize for his creation of a wheat that would grow in the desert; Sylvia Earle, the world’ first woman aquanaut, who was studying farming in the sea; and Robert Reines, who created a village powered only by the sun and wind in New Mexico

PRECIOUS MEMORIES 9 Min
St. Christopher’s
This film celebrates the “Precious Memories” that the St. Christopher summer camps provide to the inner city children. Days of fun, love and affection from a wonderful staff.

PORTRAIT/PERSONAL STORY Series’
CBS News, Public Affairs Department
Over 400 programs featuring many of the most outstanding men and women in the world, National leaders, actors, philosophers, musicians, composers, writers, speaking with candor and introspection on a host of subjects, from childhood memories to the reasons for their success.

THE UNITY OF PICASSO’S ART:
PROFESSOR MEYER SCHAPIRO 92 Min
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Director of a world class Museum spoke for many when he said, “Our Mothers taught us how to walk, but Professor Meyer Schapiro taught us how to see!” Through innovative use of computer graphics a gallery of Picasso paintings was created so that one of the Columbia University Professor’s most famous lectures would be transformed into a film, to preserve forever his extraordinary insights.

REFLECTIONS 28 Min
American Bank & Trust
To celebrate the Bi-Centennial in Pennsylvania, we created an affectionate portrait of the people and the extraordinary diversity in 5 of its counties. Filming for an entire year, we went from the coal fields in Schuylkill, to the Amish farms of Lebanon and Lancaster, to the steel mills of Montgomery to the urban Berks filming people and events with the sound track dedicated entirely to the people’s voices.

REFLECTIONS BY ROBERT FROST 29 Min
CBS News, Public Affairs Department
Friendship, magnanimity and the subject of good neighbors was Robert Frost’s subject in this solo tour de force.

SHARING A VISION 29 Min
Frederick Weisman Foundation
Eager to share his passion for contemporary art with the world. Collector Fred Weisman had an exhibit created from his collection and then sent it around the world. This film documents that experience and its affect upon visitors in Jerusalem, Anchorage, Alaska, Los Angeles and Tokyo. It also visits the studios of some of the artists, like Christo, Alex Katz and Ed Ruscha for their views on collectors and collecting.

TAKE JOY 13 Min
American Cancer Society
Instead of a conventional anti-smoking film, we created a film designed to have children celebrate the systems of their body that made life so much fun, running, swimming under water, eating, jumping. The principle narrated line was “You have one body, and only one body, that will be with you for the rest of your life. So Take Joy in Life, take joy in yourself!

THE HIDDEN REVOLUTION 3 Hours
CBS News, Public Affairs Department
Narrated by Edward R. Murrow, this series examined the changes in society, in all aspects of life, as viewed by leading educators, philosophers, writers, journalists and politicians

THE LAST JOURNEY 29 min
World Jewish Congress
Still photographs documenting what remained of Jewish life in the Soviet Union were smuggled out of the country to the United States. They were taken by two journalists, one a Professor of Philosophy, Nodar Djindjihashvili, a perilous journey covering thousands of miles across the Soviet Untion. Utilizing the photo-animated technique and live action footage of Nodar, we created a film was featured on the CBS Network and nominated for an Emmy.

THE OPEN BLUEPRINT 18 Min
IBM
This film dramatized the transformation of IBM from being a hardware company, just selling computers to one providing services as a main source of income.

THE TRUETT CATHY STORY 43 Min
Chick-filj-A
The life story of an original Horatio Alger who, with little education, created a boneless breast of chicken sandwich and with it a chain of fast food stores called Chick-fil-A that has defined the true meaning of quality and service and earns two billion dollars in annual sales. The underlying story of this businessman//philanthropist is his unshakable faith in God and commitment to be a good steward to the rewards he has received and has given..

THE UK REPORT 24 Min
American Express
To dramatize the positive role that American Express plays in the host countries in which it operates, we selected the UK and covered three events sponsored by Amex to make that point. The first was an exhibit of Picasso’s drawings in the National Gallery, the second was a school created to train young men and women for jobs in the travel industry. And finally, a marvelous program of music in the great cathedrals of England with the London Festival Orchestra.

THIS WAY UP 22 Min
The Fashion Institute of Technology
A portrait of the most important school for the fashion industry in the world used as a fund raising tool to help build the great complex. The film used our photo-animated technique, with photographs shot by the gifted Bruce Davidson and a sound track drawn entirely from actuality sound of the staff and students.

TO TOUCH THEIR HEARTS 18 Min
Westchester Holocaust Commission
In a moving encounter, two Holocaust survivors, Sol Hubert, Jack Polak and rescuer, Dr. Tina Strobos, share their experiences with a class of High School Students. Sol was separated from his parents as a child and would never see them again. Jack survived a concentrayion camp and Tina faced death from the Gestapo for her efforts saving Jews. The Commission is decicated to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive and its lessons alive.

TODAY’S HEALTH Series 7 Hours
After acquiring the rights to the American Medical Association’s consumer magazine we syndicated a television series. In addition to news about the latest developments in medicine, the series featured celebrities who had various confrontations with health issues, Peter Sellers, Lloyd Nolan, Dina Merrill, Eunice Kennedy

HEALTHY LIVING Series 12 Hours
Many of the physicians and nurses of the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, one of the country’s 100 leading Medical Centers, are the stars in this series that puts a human face on medical care and information. The series captures the drama of the Emergency Room to watching an Interventional Radiologist enter the brain of a wide-awake 79-year-old woman to prevent an inevitable stroke.

UNRAVELING THE TRAGEDY AT BHOPAL INDIA 25 Min
Union Carbide
An investigative documentary that sought to identify the cause of the most tragic industrial event in history. The most dramatic moment came with the testimony of a former worker, filmed in Calcutta, India, who identified the act of sabotage that triggered the explosive release of the poison gas from the Union Carbide plant, that affected and killed thousands.

VALLEY FORGE: NO FOOD, NO SOLDIER! 13 Min
The New York Times
No history books about the Revolution for children acknowledged that the cry, “No Food, No Soldier” was heard in Valley Forge. This revisionist film dispels the myth that all were heroes in Pennsylvania. Without phony heroics, the film tells the story of that terrible winter and recovery in Valley Forge in the words of those who suffered, making the experience truly come alive, making them true heroes of the Revolution. Our costumed soldiers were only treated as soft focus “ghosts”.

YORKTOWN: THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN 13 Min
The New York Times
In the same spirit and with the same kind of evocative photography, “soldiers” and use of contemporary accounts of the event as in Valley Forge: No Food, No Soldier, this film tells the story of the final battle of the Revolution, both on land and with the rescuing French fleet on the high seas, as well.

VOYAGES: JOURNEY OF THE MAGI 28 Min
The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ABC Video Enterprises
Series pilot that is premised on the idea that every work of art is the beginning of a journey. Filmed in Israel, the program followed the journey of the three Magi to Bethlehem and their escaping from Herod by leaving from the Roman seaport of Caesarea.

WHEN A CHILD DIES 15 Min
Parents Magazine
This film was designed to provide understanding about the needs of parents who have had a child die. While each of the three parents featured have lost a child for different reasons, an accident in one case, cancer in another instance and sudden infant death in the third, the film makes it absolutely clear that they all share the same pain and that simple acts, often mistakenly avoided, like not mentioning the child in conversation, is exactly what each parent wants to hear. For the parent – it means the child isn’t forgotten.

XAVIER EXPERIENCE 18 Min
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Xavier University is located in New Orleans and was created in the turn of the 20th Century to serve minorities. The University. is still giving black students an outstanding education and has produced more minority Doctors and Dentists than any other school in the country.

XEROX IN CONCERT 15 Min
Xerox
The challenge: Tell the story of a world -wide company selling many goods and services. The solution: Send an outstanding Swiss photojournalist, Rene Burri, to travel the world shooting Xerox people conducting similar activities in ways that reflected ther native countries. Select from the thousands of photos less than a hundred and photo-animate them to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. The result: A one-of-a-kind award winning film.