Laura Brownson and Beth Levison

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Laura Brownson and Beth LevisonAs a director, producer and creative executive, Laura Brownson has nearly 20 years experience in the film industry. She began her career working with Sean Penn’s Clyde is Hungry Films. Together, Penn and Brownson collaborated on several narrative films, including The Crossing Guard and Hurly Burly. She then spent several years at Paramount Studios working for Michael Douglas’ production company where she helped oversee films by acclaimed directors Sydney Pollack, John Woo and Francis Ford Coppola. Venturing on her own, she produced the award-winning short film “Wonderland” for first time director Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound). Turning her focus to television, Brownson produced two made for television movies for CBS and developed countless others for HBO, Showtime, Lifetime and others. Her documentary feature debut Lemon, directed and produced in partnership with Beth Levison, won numerous Best of Festival awards, screened at over 50 film festivals worldwide, and was broadcast on PBS. She is currently pursuing several documentary feature and short ideas, and is writing her first screenplay. In Summer 2015, Brownson is scheduled to begin production in Malaysia on a feature narrative film entitled Brother of the Pilot written by academy award winning screenwriter Richard Friedenberg and starring Hayden Christiansen.

As a director, producer, and story editor, Beth Levison has received two Emmys and three Peabody Awards. Her documentary feature debut LEMON, directed and produced in partnership with Laura Brownson, won numerous Best of Festival awards, screened at over 50 film festivals worldwide, and was broadcast on PBS as part of the Latino Public Broadcasting special series VOCES. She served as a Consulting Producer on MARINA ABRAMOVIC: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT, which was broadcast on HBO. She was the Supervising Producer of short form video for the Internet startup Etsy, where her work was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, nominated for a Webby Award, and shortlisted for a Vimeo Award. She was the Senior Producer/Director of the PBS series E2; Producer of two children’s specials for HBO (CLASSICAL BABY, 2005 Emmy Award, Outstanding Children’s Programming; A CHILD’S GARDEN OF POETRY, 2011 Emmy Award, Outstanding Children’s Programming); and Senior Producer of the Sundance Channel’s AFTEREFFECT series and 24 FRAME NEWS. An early career highlight for Levison was her time as a creator and Story Editor of EGG: THE ARTS SHOW, a weekly PBS series on the contemporary visual and performing arts, which received a Peabody Award, four national Emmy Award nominations, and five NY Emmy Awards. Levison currently teaches Producing I for first year MFA candidates enrolled in New York City’s School for Visual Arts’ Social Documentary program. She is also the Producer of AWAKENING (working title), a groundbreaking multimedia initiative – anchored by a character-driven documentary film – featuring women of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in their continuing quest to realize the goals of the region’s 2011 revolutions: “Bread, freedom and social justice!” Levison lives in New York City.