Meet The Filmmakers

Molly Bernstein, Alan Edelstein, and Ricky Jay with Scott Foundas at the New York Film Festival, 2012. Photo by Joe Holmes

MOLLY BERNSTEIN (Producer/Director)
Molly Bernstein has written and directed documentary profiles of leading figures in the arts, including Bernardo Bertolucci, Estelle Parsons, John Sayles and others for the Sundance Channel and AMC. She has also worked extensively as an editor on documentary films including the 2009 Emmy and Peabody Award winning JEROME ROBBINS: SOMETHING TO DANCE ABOUT, featured on the PBS series American Masters. Other editing credits include WITNESS TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, an historical series written by Elaine May, and LIBERTY!, a PBS series on the American Revolution produced by Middlemarch Films. Molly has recently made numerous short films with Particle Productions about contemporary artists for the James Cohan Gallery, and about art collectors in Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Los Angeles and San Francisco for the VIP Art Fair and Christie's. She has an MFA in film from Columbia University.

ALAN EDELSTEIN (Producer/Co-Director)
Alan Edelstein received an Academy Award nomination for his documentary short THE WIZARD OF STRINGS, a profile of the 1920's string instrumentalist and vaudeville star Roy Smeck. He has worked as a writer and producer for Nowak Associates, Great Projects Film Company, and Sundance Channel, among others. Recent projects include a promotional film for Education For Employment, a nonprofit organization addressing the dire unemployment problem among youth in the Middle East and North Africa, shot on location in the West Bank, Jordan, and Yemen. A journalist as well as filmmaker, he has written on arts and culture for publications including The New York Times, the Forward, and Transition.

ALICIA SAMS (Producer)
Alicia is a series producer/director of ARAB AMERICAN STORIES, a 13-episode public television series for broadcast in 2012. She is also developing the feature film PEACE LIKE A RIVER, based on Leif Enger's best-selling novel, at Warner Bros., and CATCH THE MOON, a comedy set in Gaza to be directed by Sameh Zoabi. She was producer/director (with Amy Rice) of the Emmy Award-winning film BY THE PEOPLE: THE ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA, a behind-the-scenes look at the journey of Barack Obama and his campaign staff that premiered on HBO in 2009. Also in 2009, Alicia was executive producer of Cherien Dabis' award-winning debut feature AMREEKA. Among the independent documentaries she has produced are: TOOTS, GRATEFUL DAWG, and OFF THE MENU: THE LAST DAYS OF CHASEN'S.

PHILIP DOLIN (Producer)
Through his company Particle Productions, Philip has produced and directed dozens of short films about art and artists (including Bill Viola, Roxy Paine, and Beatriz Milhazes), performers, teachers, and leaders — for Columbia University, James Cohan Gallery, the VIP Art Fair, Christie's, PBS, and others. He directed a feature film called B MOVIE, starring James Urbaniak and Missy Yager, and produced over 50 hip-hop music videos for renowned artists including Salt-n-Pepa, Kid 'n Play, MC Lyte, Chubb Rock and Monie Love. He has an MFA in film from Columbia University and was a Fulbright Scholar in South America.

MARK SINGER (Executive Producer, Author of The New Yorker profile about Ricky Jay that was the inspiration for the film).
Mark Singer has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1974. "Secrets of the Magus," his Profile of Ricky Jay, originally appeared in the issue of April 5, 1993. It was reprinted in "Life Stories," the magazine's seventy-fifth anniversary anthology of Profiles, and Singer also included it in his 2005 collection "Character Studies: Encounters With the Curiously Obsessed." Among his other books are "Funny Money," "Mr. Personality," "Citizen K," and "Somewhere in America."