Abbey Jack Neidik
Producer/Director/Camera/Writer
Abbey Neidik is an established director and producer with an oeuvre of over seventy films, including two Academy Award nominees.
In 1980 Neidik and his partner Irene Angelico formed DLI Productions. Together they produced and directed Dark Lullabies / Berceuses Sombres, which has been shown around the world and won numerous first prizes and prestigious awards. The film was included in The Fifty Greatest Documentaries of all Times at the international Salute to the Documentary, and selected to represent the best of the NFB at retrospectives in London and France. Thirty years later, Dark Lullabies continues to be shown in screenings worldwide including the inaugural film at the Stratford Festival Forum, the Berlin Arsenal 70th anniversary of the Holocaust and the Inconvenient Films: International Human Rights Festival. It recently played at the Cinema du Parc for over a week to full houses.
Next Neidik directed Between The Solitudes / Entre Solitudes, which was nominated for two Gemeaux Awards for Best Documentary and Best Editing. This was followed by two highly successful DLI features. The Love Prophet and the Children of God is an inside look at one of today’s most controversial religious cults and was awarded a Gold Plaque in Chicago. The Cola Conquest, produced by Neidik and directed by Angelico, is a three-part documentary special that garnered Best Documentary Series by an Independent at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto, a Silver Hugo in Chicago, a Gold Apple in San Francisco, a Gemini nomination for Best Documentary Series and a Gemini Award for Best Writing in a Documentary or Series.
Neidik co-produced and directed The Journey Home: A Romanian Adoption, a tender and emotional film about Romanian orphans a decade after the fall of Ceausescu, and co-produced and co-directed She Got Game: Coming of Age on the WTA Tour, a unique, behind-the-scenes look at women’s tennis that has already received four international awards; Vendetta Song, which examines the tradition of honour killings within rural Kurdish tribes in Turkey; directed Unbreakable Minds, a poignant film that aims to de-stigmatize and humanize mental illness; co-produced and co-directed (with Angelico) Inside the Great Magazines, a three-part special about the inner workings of the magazine industry and the people who create them; and directed Canadaville, USA, about billionaire Frank Stronach’s bold social experiment in rural Louisiana. Shot over two years, the film enters the lives of a group of Hurricane Katrina evacuees as they struggle to rebuild and break out of the cycle of poverty.
More recently, Neidk is co-produced and directed Beyond Earth: the Beginning of NewSpace, named by Realscreen as a MipCom Pic for 2017 and Big Wind, about the effects of industrial wind turbines.
Neidik’s latest production Shekinah Rising is a follow-up to Shekinah: the Intimate Lives of Hasidic Women. Both give an unprecedented look into the rarefied world of Hasidic women. Shekinah Rising will be released in the spring of 2018.
Neidik is currently directing, producing (with Angelico) and doing camera on The First to Stand, a documentary featuring the work of Irwin Cotler and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
Irene Lilienheim Angelico
Producer/Writer
Irene Angelico is the winner of numerous international awards for directing and producing, as well as a Gemini for best writing in a documentary. Her work was included in The Fifty Greatest Documentaries of all Times at the international Salute to the Documentary, and selected for retrospectives in London and France.
In 1980, Angelico and her partner Abbey Neidik produced and directed Dark Lullabies about the effects of the Holocaust on the next generation of Germans and Jews. This highly regarded film has garnered many prestigious international prizes, and continues to be shown in special screenings including the inaugural film at the Stratford Festival Forum, the Berlin Arsenal 70th anniversary of the Holocaust and the Inconvenient Films: International Human Rights Festival.
Angelico went on to direct and write award-winning series including The Cola Conquest, about Coca-Cola as a metaphor for America; Black Coffee, about the history and social impact of coffee and Inside the Great Magazines, about the first international media.
Angelico also produced and wrote many successful documentaries including Entre Solitudes; The Love Prophet and the Children of God; She Got Game; Vendetta Song; Canadaville, USA; and Unbreakable Minds, a poignant film that aims to humanize mental illness.
Currently, Angelico is in distribution with Shekinah: the Intimate Lives of Hasidic Women, and most recently Beyond Earth: the Beginning of NewSpace, named by Realscreen as a MipCom Pic for 2017.
Angelico is in production with Reaching for Zion, about the untold story of the relationship of Rastafari and Jews, featuring Bob Marley’s granddaughter Donisha Prendergast and just releasing Shekinah Rising, the second in a sequel about young Hasidic women.
Angelico has also been involved in the publication of several articles and two books. With Abbey Neidik and Mark Pendergrast, she edited The Aftermath: A Survivor’s Odyssey Through War-Torn Europe, written by her father, Henry Lilienheim, and endorsed by Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Elie Wiesel and the Dalai Lama. She and Yehudi Lindeman co-edited The Third Seder: A Haggadah for Yom HaShoah, which includes new rituals they created uniquely for the commemoration of Yom HaShoah.
Angelico is currently directing and producing (with A. Neidik) on The First to Stand, a documentary featuring the work of Irwin Cotler and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
Ina Fichman
Producer
For more than 23 years, Ina Fichman has been producing award-winning documentaries, fiction films, youth series, and more recently cross-media projects. In collaborating with partners worldwide, Ina has co-produced numerous projects, which have been premiered at international festivals, distributed in theatres in Canada and the United States, and broadcast on major networks such as CBC/Radio-Canada, Arte, Canal Plus and PBS.
Ina’s most recently completed productions include two documentaries that were included in the Toronto International Film Festival 2014, The Wanted 18 and Monsoon. Both were well received. Also recently completed is the documentary, 100 % T-shirt. Amongst Ina’s other recent documentary projects for television are Albert Nerenberg’s Boredom Dead Sea Living, the mini-series Citizen or Stranger, as well as Enfance sous contrôle, Against the Current, Beyond Earth: the Beginning of NewSpace and Hannah Arendt.
Ina was one of the producers of Six Days in June, That’s Poker and S&M: Short and Male. Other completed projects include The Return of Tommy Tricker, Terre d’Espoir, Moise, Mow, la Force de l’Âge, and a series for adolescents Vampire High. In 2003, Ina won a Gémeaux for best historical program for the documentary Undying Love. Also in documentary, she produced prize-winning Being Dorothy the series Black Coffee, Longshots and Last Trip. She was executive producer for Partly Private. Among her television programs: Je Vis Ta Vie, La Quête, and the youth series Active-toi, which also had an interactive game component on active-toi.ca.
Martin Nault
Editor/Writer
With over seven years experience as an editor and more than fifteen years in the domain of postproduction, Martin Nault has an impressive list of feature films in 35mm and IMAX, documentaires including Reaching for Zion, Shekinah Rising, Beyond Earth: the Beginning of NewSpace, Search for God and Big Wind; and television séries, fiction films and animation including Only in Montreal, Les Cracks du Lab, Madlabs, and Dogs with Jobs.
Henri Oppenheim
Original Music
A defrocked mathematician, Henri Oppenheim grew up in Paris and studied composition and orchestration at McGill University in Montreal. He was the accordionist and director of the Montreal klezmer ensemble Kleztory for many years (Opus Prize 2007), producing concerts on 4 continents. In 2008, he founded Magillah, an ensemble dedicated to vocal Yiddish music, which Le Devoir described as “spectacular, celebratory, joyous and packed with emotion”.
Oppenheim’s project, “Tur Malka”, is a song cycle based on 20th Century Yiddish poetry from Montreal, transposes the rich musical traditions of the Old World into the new. Henri is a part time music-therapist at the Montreal General Jewish Hospital, and gives seminars about Klezmer and Yiddish music. Most recently, he did the original music for Shekinah Rising.
Margaux Ouimet
Sound
Margaux Ouimet began her career at the National Film Board of Canada where she wrote, directed and produced a short fiction and several award-winning documentaries. In the private industry, she created and managed the production of a 26-part series broadcast on Radio-Canada TV. As well, she has produced, written and co-directed documentary films, which have won awards at Hot Docs International Festival and Torino Film Festival among others. In 2014, she founded Abejas Productions to produce and direct Walking the Cuban Tightrope.
Toben Neidik
Sound
Toben Neidik is a rap singer, artist, film student, and soundman. His work is on display at the Montreal’s Children’s Hospital and has been exhibited in the Grand Chalet on Mont Royal. He has done camera on several music videos and sound and additional camera on documentaries including Reaching for Zion; Search for God, and Unbreakable Minds; and sound on Beyond Earth, the Beginning of NewSpace, Shekinah Rising and Elmyr.
Toben is currently doing sound and additional camera on The First to Stand, a documentary featuring the work of Irwin Cotler and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
