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Gaylen Ross

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Gaylen Ross (born August 15, 1950, Indianapolis, Indiana) is an American director, writer, producer and actress.

File:GaylenRossPhoto.jpg
Gaylen Ross

Background and Career

Ross was born Gail Rosenblum in Indianapolis, Indiana to Anne and Wolf Rosenblum. She is a graduate of Broad Ripple High School in Indianapolis and she studied at Monterey Peninsula College, California. She received her BA from The New School for Social Research in Literature.[citation needed]

Ross was managing editor of the poetry journal, Antaeus and Ecco Press from 1975 to 1977. Ross has been a documentary filmmaker, including the films Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt with Nazis about the Hungarian Jew Rudolf Kasztner who negotiated with Adolf Eichmann to save the last Jews from occupied Europe, and Dealers Among Dealers, the definitive documentary of New York’s 47th Street diamond world.

Ross was an actress for four years, starring in George A. Romero's 1978 horror film Dawn of the Dead, followed by her portrayal of Leslie Nielsen's adulterous wife "Becky Vickers" in George Romero and Stephen King's 1982 Creepshow.

Ross holds duel citizenship in the United States and Israel.[citation needed] In 2015, she was named to the Indianapolis Public School Education Foundation’ s Hall of Fame. [1]

Current Work

Now an noted director, Ross's films produced by her own production company GR Films include: Listen To Her Heart: The Life and Music of Laurie Beechman; Not Just Las Vegas, about the rise of nationwide gambling in the USA; To Russia For Love, about the Russian Mail-order bride business; Selling The Dream: Stock Hype and Fraud; Dealers Among Dealers and the Emmy Award-winning Blood Money: Switzerland's Nazi Gold. Ross, along with John Connolly co-authored Married To A Stranger, about the Russian mail order bride business, published by Berkeley Publishing Group.

In 2009, Ross released Killing Kasztner[2] on the life and assassination of Rezso Kasztner. The film depicts Kasztner, a Hungarian Jew, who negotiated with the Nazis during World War II for the release of 1,700 Jews and was later assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1957. The film has been screened in theaters and festivals in over eleven countries. It premiered at Toronto International Film Festival, was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the best documentary films of 2010, and won Best Documentary at both Boston Jewish Film Festival and Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival.

Her film Dealers Among Dealers (1995) won a Gold Plaque at the Chicago Film Festival and was named “Best of Fest” at the Edinburgh Film Festival. [3] It was broadcast on the PBS series POV. Both films were produced with long time collaborator Andy Cohen.

She wrote Blood Money: Switzerland’s Nazi Gold (1997), co-produced with Stephen Crisman, which won an Emmy Award[4] and premiered at Berlin Film Festival.

Her documentary After Solidarity: Three Polish Families in America tells the story of three families who arrived as political refugees following the break up of Communism and Lech Walesa’s 1984 Solidarity protests in Poland. The film was shown on The Learning Channel and WNET.

In 2011, Ross released Caris' Peace [5] which documents film and stage actress Caris Corfman's struggles with the brain tumor that left her without short-term memory. The film features numerous friends and colleagues of Caris including Kate Burton, Tony Shaloub, and Lewis Black.

Other films and television projects have covered such diverse subjects as cabaret and Broadway Theater star Laurie Beechman (2003's Listen to Her Heart: The Life and Music of Laurie Beeckman), and for A&E Television and CH4UK on bank fraud, gambling in America, and Russian mail-order brides. She has also directed productions for both “The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous" and the "UJA Federations of North America".

Her current projects include professional boxing documentary Titleshot [6]; with co-director Andy Cohen, projects in post production include films on the Village Gate, Chinese artists and democracy leaders, and human rights activists.

References

  1. ^ http://ipsef.org/hall-fame-class-2015/
  2. ^ http://www.killingkasztner.com/
  3. ^ https://jfi.org/watch-online/jfi-on-demand/dealers-among-dealers
  4. ^ http://www.tvguide.com/g00/tvshows/investigative-reports/episode-910756/194492/?i10c.referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
  5. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1047450/
  6. ^ http://www.titleshotfilm.com/
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