UMass Amherst

UMass Amherst Jewish Affairs

Office of Jewish Affairs

Oren Jacoby


The film "Constantine's Sword" will be shown at UMass Amherst on 3/27/08.
More information about this event


OREN JACOBY (Director/Producer/Co-writer of the film "Constantine's Sword") is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker who has written, directed, and produced award-winning films for more than two decades. He has made documentaries for the BBC, ABC, HBO, PBS, National Geographic, VH-1, and NHK (Japan).

His last film, “Sister Rose’s Passion”, was winner of Best Documentary Short at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival and was nominated for a 2005 Academy Award.

Recent credits include: “Downtown Stories” 5 portraits/jam sessions commissioned by Nokia and the Tribeca Film Festival, featuring Rosie Perez and Ed Burns; “The Topdog Diaries” with the 2002 Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, Suzan-Lori Parks, and performances by Don Cheadle and Jeffrey Wright; “The Shakespeare Sessions” starring Kevin Kline, Cynthia Nixon, Liev Schreiber, and Charles S. Dutton; “The Beatles Revolution”, for ABC and VH-1, “Swingin’ with Duke”, starring Wynton Marsalis and ”Sam Shepard: Stalking Himself”; “Master Thief” on the ‘art heist of the century’; and “Success” for the Emmy award-winning PBS series, The Irish in America.

Jacoby also wrote, produced and directed “The Return Ticket”, adapted from a short story by Anton Chekhov; “Ghosts of the Bayou”; “Idols of the Game”, featuring Michael Jordan; “Benny Goodman: Adventures in the Kingdom of Swing” for American Masters and “The Second Russian Revolution”, a behind the scenes investigation of the collapse of the USSR, called ‘the best BBC series of the decade’ by the London Independent.

He is currently producing “The Italian Secretary”, based on the novel my Caleb Carr and “The Marquis de Lafayette” (working title). His has just completed “The Last Girl on Earth” a romantic-comedy short commissioned by the Tribeca Film Festival based on a screenplay by Richard Dresser; see it online at http://surround.verizon.net/presents/tff/

In addition to being honored by the Academy and the Tribeca Film Festival, he has won CINE Golden Eagles, the Royal Television Society (UK) journalism award, and the MacArthur Golden Owl award, as well as grants from the American Film Institute and ITVS (The Independent Television Service).

Jacoby has directed plays at Theater for the New City, the Williamstown Theater Festival, Ensemble Studio Theater, the West Bank Café and regional theaters, including new works by Richard Dresser, Quincy Long, and Franz Xavier Kroetz. He collaborated with Adrian Hall on an adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men”, with songs by Randy Newman, at the Dallas Theater Center and Trinity Rep. His stage adaptation of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man was performed in a reading at the Tribeca Theater Festival, in a co-production with the Classical Theater of Harlem. He wrote the screenplay for “Shores of a Dream” (in development) and is co-author with Forrest Stone of the original screenplay “Tarzan Brown” for the Oxford Film Company. He attended Brown University, RISD and the Directing Program of the Yale School of Drama and is a native New Yorker.


The film "Constantine's Sword" will be shown at UMass Amherst on 3/27/08.
More information about this event



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