Master Collaborations: The Power of Creative Partnerships – Kahane Cooperman and Raphaela Neihausen (Joe’s Violin)

Master Collaborations: The Power of Creative Partnerships – Kahane Cooperman and Raphaela Neihausen (Joe’s Violin)

Event: Wednesday May 23, 2018

NYWIFT is very excited to launch a new series, Master Collaborations: The Power of Creative Partnerships, which provides a unique opportunity to hear accomplished women in the industry discuss their key collaborations on a film or television project. How do these women connect and join forces? How do they complement each other during the process? What does it take to make the project happen? What were some of the challenging and defining moments?

Join us as we kick off our first conversation between Kahane Cooperman (Director/Producer) and Raphaela Neihausen (Producer) as they discuss their film Joe’s Violin, Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary Short Film in 2017.  In Joe’s Violin, a donated musical instrument forges an improbable friendship between 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Joe Feingold and 12-year-old Bronx school girl Brianna Perez, showing how the power of music can bring light in the darkest of times and how a small act can have a great impact. 

This discussion will explore the director and producer partnership, and how together, they brought a powerful story to life. The conversation will be moderated by Liz Cook Mowe, Director of Documentary Film at Kickstarter. We look forward to a very stimulating evening as these amazing and talented women share their collaborative journey on this special film! 

Kahane Cooperman is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and television producer. With her films, she strives to tell intimate stories that highlight our shared humanity. She directed and produced the 2017 Academy Award-nominated documentary short Joe’s Violin. Most recently, Cooperman produced seven short documentaries about autism, and directed two of them for HBO. She also recently executive produced and directed a four-hour true crime series for SundanceTV, Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders. Prior, she was the Executive Producer and showrunner of The New Yorker Presents, a series for Amazon Prime. From 1996-2015, she had an integral role on the acclaimed television program, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where she was originally hired as a field producer in 1996 and rose through the ranks to become Co-Executive Producer from 2005-2015. For her work at The Daily Show, she received eleven Primetime Emmy awards and three Peabody awards. In 2017, Cooperman was honored as a Variety Magazine’s Woman of Impact. She began her documentary career at Maysles Films in NYC. Her other films include Cool Water(Sundance Film Festival) and Making Dazed about Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused. She has an MFA in Film from Columbia University.

Raphaela Neihausen is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary film festival. She is also Executive Director of Split Screens TV Festival and Stranger Than Fiction – a weekly series at IFC Center now in its 14th year. She co-hosts WNYC’s Doc of the Week and is the Executive Producer of the podcast Pure Nonfiction. From 2011 – 2014, she launched the Montclair Film Festival, as Executive Director. Neihausen produced the award-winning and 2017 Oscar-nominated short documentary Joe’s Violin. Prior to that, she produced the feature documentary Miss GULAG (recipient of grants from the Ford Foundation and Sundance Documentary Fund) that premiered at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival and was broadcast worldwide. Neihausen holds a BSFS/MA joint degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Liz Cook Mowe is the Director of Documentary Film at Kickstarter. Previously she has worked in France with the U.S. State Department, in India with A.R. Rahman, composer and musician, and in NYC as the acquisitions manager for the digital distributer, SnagFilms. She has spoken at a variety of film festivals including IDFA, TIFF, Cannes, Sheffield Doc Fest, Hot Docs, and Sundance.

Produced by Terry Greenberg