Andrea Simon

Andrea Simon is noted for visually striking and intellectually provocative work. Her NEH-commissioned film-essay on American identity, TALK TO ME, was praised as "More eloquent than a decade's worth of presidential speechifying...This America sings." (Todd Gitlin, WSJ) Selected earlier work includes PBS specials DESTINATION MOZART: A NIGHT AT THE OPERA WITH PETER SELLARS and VIENNA 1900, (a MoMA commission, collaboration with the late Kirk Varnedoe); films for the Metropolitan Museum of Art (FAYUM PORTRAITS, ART OF INDONESIA: TALES FROM THE SHADOW WORLD); GLORIA GARFINKEL: ALWAYS EXPERIMENTING, a portrait of the New York artist at work in her studio; KORIAM¹S LAW, intimate portrait of a "cargo cult" in Papua New Guinea; SALKA VIERTEL and LA JUIVE, key elements of acclaimed exhibition The Power of Conversation at The Jewish Museum in New York; UNVEILED, on secular women and political Islam in Turkey. As Producer on Bloomberg TV's acclaimed arts program MUSE, Simon created 100 short films: subjects ranged from Gunter Grass to Philip Glass, including architects David Adjaye, Ben van Berkel, Richard Gluckman, Steven Holl, Robert A.M. Stern. Her recenty completed COLOSSUS (2011), commissioned for the 125th anniversary of Statue of Liberty, explores the changing significance of this national symbol in a post-9/11 world. In production: ART IS A WEAPON, portrait of brilliant Bulgarian filmmaker Angel Wagenstein.