Video
I began creating my films in elementary school after stealing my dad's Hi8 video camera. After studying audio engineering and production in college I returned to creating films. I bought my first video camera in 2008 and sold my first documentary Lost & Found to Current TV which premiered at Silverdocs Film Festival the same year.
Since then I have made music videos, short films, image films, documentaries, animations, 3d projections, and a feature-length film as well as taught both high school and university-level film courses.
Here is a short reel of some of my projects. Below you can find out a bit more about my favorites.
Sankofa - Feature Film
The idea for Sankofa came to me while hunting down Spomeniks, in the former Yugoslavia. I took two Super8 cameras, a DSLR, and a GoPro along with a couple of tripods and a bag of gear. When I returned to Berlin I began crafting a narrative, along with my brother Eli, to incorporate the footage of the Spomeniks into a sci-fi experimental film.
In partnership with Molly Aida Film, we crowdfunded the film on Kickstarter and began shooting in an old former East Berlin factory. With a crew of friends, we shot for 10 days to produce the sci-fi sections of the film. Over the next year, we edited the Spomenik footage with what we shot on set to create Sankofa. The film premiered at the Fantastic Zagreb Film Festival in 2014 and had its US premiere at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival the same year.
"Sankofa is a rare mix of genres that asks important questions about recorded media"
Earth is uninhabited by man. Most died, a few left for Titan, a moon of Saturn. With them they took the remnants of humanity, what was left of it anyway. But due to an accident, the ships were damaged, and the remnants lost. They arrived on Titan without their history and soon began to lose their memory. Sankofa is a film about the woman they asked to find it.
Light Works
In 2010 I created a new camera technique after experimenting with some lenses and filters. I discovered that bokeh (the out-of-focus shapes lenses create) could be turned into more than just simple shapes. Using stencils created by my friend Aric, I found I could turn the out-of-focus lights in a scene into letters and words. Collaborating with a few other friends, we shot a short sequence in Albuquerque, New Mexico, using some fireworks and 4-wheelers.
What resulted was an experimental short film that went viral and earned a Vimeo Staff Pick. The technique was even used in the intro sequence for Saturday Night Lives's 40th season.
Blinkist
Blinkist is a book-summarizing subscription service based in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 2012 by Holger Seim, Niklas Jansen, Sebastian Klein, and Tobias Balling and has 23 million downloads as of 2023.
I was the Head of Video at Blinkist from 2017 to 2021. I managed a team of motion graphics artists, designers, and editors to create performance marketing ads, television commercials, and YouTube content. Over the years we created hundreds of top-performing ads for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and more.
Here is one of my favorites featuring my coworker Eric.