Zev Berman

Originally from Washington D.C., Zev attended Oberlin

College and received a BA in English and Theater. His

initial passion for the stage pushed him to study

acting and directing, including master classes in

technique with Lisa Harrow and Patrick Stewart of The

Royal Shakespeare Company. Zev performed leading roles

in eleven faculty directed productions, and was

nominated two years in a row for the Irene Ryan acting

award. He went on to direct a summer theater series

for

Washington D.C.’’s Capital Hill Players, including a

critically acclaimed production of Mary Shelly’’s

“Frankenstein”.

After moving to San Francisco, Zev jumped headfirst

into film and behind the camera by assisting producers

on the independent feature “Chalk”, directed by

acclaimed filmmaker Rob Nilsson. Zev went on to study

film production through San Francisco’’s Film Arts

Foundation and the Bay Area Video coalition. He then

directed, wrote, and edited a series of dramatic

shorts in 16 and 35mm: “Eicere”, “Inside Out”, and

“Wicked”. Zev has worked professionally as an

assistant cameraman and assistant director on numerous

music videos, television commercials, CD Rom games,

and the occasional feature. He has chaired juries on

several occasions for the National Educational Film

and Video Festival.

In 1998, Zev completed his MFA in directing at the Los

Angeles based American Film Institute, where he was a

recipient of the 1997 Elizabeth and Ernest Shenkin

Fellowship in Filmmaking given through the Yale

University School of Art. His thesis film

“Angelmaker”, a 26 minute short reviewed by the LA

Weekly as “Lushly photographed … and impossible to

forget”, premiered in April of 1998 and made the

rounds on the festival circuit where it won a CINE

Golden Eagle and became a regional finalist for the

1998 Student Academy Awards.

Since finishing his MFA, he has directed commercials

for such clients as Panasonic, and a live action

special-effects segment for the ride film “Dragon

Planet” showing in the Showscan theater at LA’’s

Universal City Walk. Zev is currently in the final

stages of post-production on his first feature film,

“Briar Patch”, starring Dominique Swain, Henry Thomas,

and Karen Allen. He is currently developing his second

feature, a western based on a notorious

turn-of-the-century female outlaw.