Team
Robert H. Lieberman
Director/Producer
Robert H. Lieberman is a best-selling novelist and film director. He is also a longtime member of the Physics faculty at Cornell University.
Mr. Lieberman has six published novels, his newest is The Boys Of Truxton.
His previous film, They Call It Myanmar, was a New York Times Critics Pick and was named one of the top dozen documentaries of 2012 by Roger Ebert.
Filmography:
They Call It Myanmar (Documentary feat. Aung San Suu Kyi)
Last Stop Kew Gardens (American children of Holocaust survivors)
Faces In A Famine (PBS film covering 1985 Ethiopian famine)
BoyceBall (Film depicting the creation of an original ballet)
Green Lights (Comedy)Twitter: @BobLieberman
Home: Ithaca FilmWorks
Deborah C. Hoard
Producer
Deborah C. Hoard has been a producer and director at PhotoSynthesis Productions for 25 years. With a strong focus on social justice, her work has won more than 100 international and national media awards.
Deborah was co-producer of They Call it Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain, which the late Roger Ebert called “a thing of beauty… a documentary with all the virtues of a great feature film.”
CIVIL WARRIORS, her most recent film, explores the experiences of 2 black families from upstate New York whose men enlisted in the U.S. Colored Troops and fought in the Civil War.
Her recent documentary RE:THINKING asks the question, “What if we taught
students HOW to think instead of WHAT to think?” The film shows the powerful, positive change that occurs when teachers and students work together to build knowledge instead of memorize
information.
David Kossack
Editor/Story
David Kossack is a graduate of Ithaca College’s Park School of Communications. Since joining PhotoSynthesis Productions he has worked as an editor and videographer on numerous PSP projects, including editing the award-winning documentary They Call it Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain.
David is also actively involved with The Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca where he teaches acting and has directed several stage productions for the Workshop’s theater company.
Norm Scott
Sound Design
Norm Scott got his first tape recorder at the age of five, and has been recording and archiving sound ever since. He likes robots and inventing essential new gadgets with no discernible purpose.
Scott Hitz
Puppet Director
Scott Hitz is a Director, Producer, Puppeteer, and educator whose work has been seen worldwide. His company, PuppHitz, is dedicated to promoting the art of puppetry, and to expanding the idea of what that art form can do. He has been honored with the position of Artist in Residence at the Eugene O’Neil Theater Center summer puppetry program, and his work has taken him to Korea as part of the Chunchon International Festival for Puppetry. Scott has also been the recipient of a Henson seed grant for his production Ursa Major: The Voice of the Bear.
Director's Statement
A personal message from Robert:
As a child of the Holocaust, I was initially drawn to Cambodia because I was curious to see if there were any lingering effects of the Khmer Rouge genocide in today’s young people.
I was determined not to make a doom and gloom movie. Rather, I wanted to provide a sweeping portrait of the country, its people and history, its politics and psychology. Of course there was no way to avoid Cambodia’s darkest period.
I got lucky and got a two-hour, eyeball-to-eyeball interview with Hun Sen, Cambodia’s strongman/prime minister who never gives interviews.
Rather than using a crew in Cambodia, I shot the 149 interviews recording the sound by myself and using only available lighting. It allowed people to be comfortable enough to share their most intimate thoughts. My intention is that this be a story of hope and recovery told through the Cambodian people— the young and old, artists and teachers, politicians and just plain ordinary people.
Having lived through the Vietnam war, I was forced to come to grips with Nixon and Kissinger’s secret bombing and incursion into this neutral country that helped set the stage for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. It strikes me that in the present political climate the film has an immediacy that makes the story today as relevant as ever.
Our production team’s hope is that this film will build on the major success of our previous film “They Call It Myanmar.”
Robert H. Lieberman, Director
