Fellowships

Micha LivneLaurel Fox Vlock Filmmaker-in-Residence 2023

Micha Livne has been an independent producer, camera man, video editor, and director since 1983. He has a graduate degree from Beit Zvi School of Performing Arts and Cinema in Ramat Gan, Israel. His most recent works include Moranov (2021) and Closed Story (2015), both of which were screened at the Docaviv Film Festival.

Ohad UfazLaurel Fox Vlock Filmmaker-in-Residence 2023

Ohad Ufaz is a filmmaker, film scholar and a Senior Lecturer at Oranim Academic College in Kiryat Tiv’on, Israel. He defended his dissertation, “Camera of Encounter: On the question of documenting and bearing the Other’s testimony in film” at Hebrew University in 2021. Since 1997, Ufaz has directed films that have been broadcast and screened internationally including The Boys from Lebanon (2008) and Going Dutch (2002).

Asaf GalayLaurel Fox Vlock Filmmaker-in-Residence 2021

Asaf Galay is an award-winning filmmaker whose documentaries examine the creativity of modern Jewish culture. His recently-completed documentary The Adventures of Saul Bellow will be screened as part of the PBS American Masters series. It was awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities and was a winner of the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film.

He is currently directing and producing Cartooning America about one of the world’s most popular and controversial cartoon characters in the 1930s, Betty Boop. This film is also supported by the NEH. His celebration of kitsch pop music Army of Lovers in the Holy Land won top honors at the 2018 Haifa Film Festival. He also directed and produced The Muses of Bashevis Singer about the great Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. His earlier films include The Hebrew Superhero which looks at comic book culture in Israel while Hasidistock is a “joyous and surprisingly profound” documentary on ultra-Orthodox Jewish pop singers.

Daphne GeismarLaurel Fox Vlock Filmmaker-in-Residence 2021

Daphne Geismar plans, designs, and produces books on art and history for museums and publishers including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Yale University Press. Her designs have won numerous awards from organizations such as the American Alliance of Museums, the Association of American University Presses (AAUP), The Association of Art Museum Curators, and the New England Book Show. She has been a juror for AAUP and the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Geismar is the author and designer of Invisible Years. Published in 2020, it is a breathtaking and intimate portrait of her extended Jewish family living in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. Through interwoven letters, diaries, and interviews, Geismar presents the story of nine family members—in there own words—alongside a trove of photographs and artifacts.

For her MFA in graphic design at Yale University, Geismar’s thesis project revealed new findings about Direction magazine—an anti-fascism periodical run by artists and writers at the outset of World War II. As an educator, Geismar developed and taught a photography and writing program for teenage mothers at Middlesex Hospital; she teaches book design at the University of Connecticut; and she has lectured and been a visiting critic in graphic design at a number of colleges and universities.