Moving Stories

Filmmakers: Robert Fruchtman, Cornelia Ravenal, Mikael Sodersten, Wendy Sax
AFS Representatives: Robert Fruchtman (Director), Cornelia Ravenal (Co-Filmmaker, Producer)

Runtime:
84 min

Moving Stories follows Battery Dance’s dancers as they travel to India, Romania, Korea, and Iraq working with at-risk youth through the Dancing to Connect program. With just one week to teach the tools of choreography and collaboration to the youth in preparation for a final performance, the film captures the struggle, frustration, determination, and transformation of both students and teachers.

About The Representatives

Rob Fruchtman is an award-winning director and editor of documentaries and television. He won the 2002 Documentary Director award at the Sundance Film Festival for Sister Helen, which aired on HBO, as well as three Emmy Awards and several nominations for his work with HBO and PBS. He directed and produced Seeing Proof, about the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and its lingering effect on Cambodia for George Soros’ Open Society Institute. He also made Trust Me for Showtime, about Jewish, Christian, and Islamic boys at an interfaith camp. He directed all 13 episodes of Samurai Sportsman for the Outdoor Life Network and Secrets of Angels, Demons & Masons, based on Dan Brown’s best-selling novels. His last film, Sweet Dreams, made with sister Lisa Fruchtman, about a women’s drumming troupe made up of women from both sides of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, has been screened and broadcast around the world.

CORNELIA RAVENAL is a writer-filmmaker with work performed at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and regional theaters, published in North American and Asian media, and screened at over 25 international festivals. Projects include MOVING STORIES (Producer, Co-Filmmaker), which premiered at MOMA’s 2018 Doc Fortnight and is in its festival run; the 2015 off-Broadway NY Times Critics Pick NIRBHAYA (Producer); the off-beat documentary FIVE FEELINGS ABOUT FOOD (Co-Director, Producer, Writer); and the award-winning shorts THE OTHER WOMAN (Writer, Producer) and WHITE MAN’S BLUES (Writer, Producer) starring Michael Nyqvist GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO). As a journalist and cultural critic, she’s written for The Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Post and Art Asia Pacific and was a US Correspondent for India Today, India’s leading newsmagazine. As a scriptwriter, she’s written for producer Charlie Wessler (DUMB AND DUMBER) and has been recognized by the Nicholl Fellowship and three times by the Writers Lab funded by Meryl Streep (2016 Semifinalist, 2017 Finalist, 2018 Winner). She co-founded WIP (Women Independent Producers), an organization that meets monthly to discuss critical topics and share professional resources. She has a B.A. in English and American Literature from Harvard University and has lived in Sweden, Egypt and India.