Our Team
Menachem Daum
Menachem Daum
will serve as Director. He is an independent documentary filmmaker whose award-winning films have appeared on American, Israeli and Polish television. His first PBS documentary, A Life Apart: Hasidism in America (1997) http://www.pbs.org/alifeapart/, was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and was narrated by Leonard Nimoy and Sarah Jessica Parker. A Life Apart explores the post-Holocaust revival of Hasidism in America. After a successful theatrical release and national broadcast it went on to win numerous awards including a CINE Golden Eagle and was nominated for a national Emmy. He also was co-producer and co-director of Hiding and Seeking(2005) http://www.pbs.org/pov/hidingandseeking/ . In this personal film he takes his family on an emotional journey to Poland to track down the Poles who risked their lives to hide his wife’s father for more than two years during World War II. After its theatrical release Hiding and Seeking went on to a very successful national broadcast on POV and received numerous awards including an Independent Spirit Award nomination. Daum co-produced and co-directed The Ruins of Lifta: Where the Holocaust and Nakba Meet (2016). Lifta is the only Arab village abandoned in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that has not been completely destroyed or repopulated by Jews. Daum meets Yacoub, who was expelled from Lifta and now leads a coalition of Jews and Muslims struggling to save the haunting ruins of his village from Israeli plans to build luxury villas on the site. Daum recently completed Only With Joy: The Life and Legacy of Rabbi Meir Shapiro (2020)
Steven Fischler
will serve as Producer. He is a recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in Film, Emmy Awards, Cine Golden Eagles and the John Grierson Award for Social Documentaries. He and Joel Sucher founded Pacific Street Films in 1971, and they have produced and directed documentary films for venues as diverse as the United Nations, the BBC and commercial and public television in the United States. These include portraits of Hollywood artists like Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone and Jessica Lange, as well as investigations of police surveillance and misconduct. Pacific Street Films produced many social and historical documentaries, such as “From Swastika To Jim Crow,” which tells the story of Jewish Refugee scholars driven from Germany by the Nazis who found teaching positions in the Jim Crow South. Both the Museum of Modern Art and the Harvard Film Archives have honored Pacific Street Films with career retrospective programs. Steven Fischler was the director of the 2007 PBS-broadcast documentary, “Beyond Wiseguys: Italian Americans & The Movies” and the producer of “Dressing America: Tales From The Garment Center,” broadcast in 2014. Fischler wrote and directed the documentary, “Five Finger Discount: A Jersey City Story,” which premiered on WNET in March of 2017.
Martin Dornbaum
will serve as Associate Producer. Martin is an independent documentary filmmaker, educator, researcher and writer. He and Menachem Daum began making films together in 1996.Their first effort, In Care Of: Families and Their Elders (1997), led to numerous film awards including an Emmy nomination. They continued their partnership with A Life Apart: Hasidism in American (1997), Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust (2005) and The Ruins of Lifta: Where the Holocaust and Nakba Meet (2016). Together they produced numerous segments which aired on PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly including: “Holocaust Reconciliation (2005)”, “African- American Jews (2007)”, “Shlomo Carlebach (2008)”, “Lifta (2011)”, “A Survivor Returns to Poland (2015)”, and “Ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva Controversy (2016)”. Their films have appeared internationally and received awards from the North American Interfaith Film Festival and Warsaw International Jewish Film Festival.
Martin also specializes in medical humanities films. He is currently the director of the Health Professions Education Center – Hunter College Schools of the Health Professions and an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. He also serves on the Advisory Council of the NYSIM Center at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He recently completed Power to Heal: Medicare and the Civil Rights Revolution (2019) (Co-Executive Producer) narrated by Danny Glover. The film premiered at the New York Academy of Medicine and aired nationally on PBS.
Sebastian Jensz-Stawowczyk
will serve as Director of Photography. Sebastain is a graduate of the highly regarded Polish National Film School in Lodz and has served as DP on over 20 Polish documentaries that have been widely viewed in his country. He has received awards from the President of the Association of Polish Filmmakers and the Krakow Film Festival.
Madison Guptill
Madison Guptill will serve as Webmistress for Gone But Not Forgotten. Madison completed her Bachelor's degree in Film and Media studies and is currently pursuing an MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College. She has designed press kits and other promotional materials for independent and nationally broadcast TV and film productions.