CURRENT
BIOGRAPHY FOR MITCH LEVINE
Mitch is a film
and stage director with credits the world over in theatre, film, opera and
dance. He leads the Directors Unit of the legendary Actors Studio
and is a professional member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Mitch was a fellow
in performance and design at the Juilliard School and was the recipient of
the first James Cameron Fellowship in Directing at the American Film
Institute. There, he directed COLETTE, based on the French writer and
STALE IDENTITY, an homage to Hitchcock and film noir, before embarking on SHADOWS, a global award-winning exploration of love, family and the
attraction of evil during the Holocaust. Most recently, he directed the
short drama, IN CONFIDENCE (Cannes Film
Festival – 2015), the dance documentary MORPHING GRAVITY, nine episodes of
the C/W sit-com, LIVING & LEARNING, and the documentary feature film,
HUNGRY IS THE TIGER, which utilizes traditional performance and explores
the world food crisis, focusing on India and Indonesia.
In 2017, Mitch was the Creative Director of the University of Virginia's epic and historic Bicentennial Celebration. It was a vast production: four hours, 850 performers, 23,000 in the audience, using live performance, augmented reality and projection mapping to tell the story of the past, present and future of Thomas Jefferson’s great university.
Mitch has
written, produced and directed tributes to many of the world’s greatest
cinema artists and directed the Spirit of Independence Award for
Film Independent. He was the artistic supervisor of the Robert Wilson/Philip
Glass opera, EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH and was production director and
designer of the Peter Gabriel/Moses Pendleton collaboration, PASSION. He
recently directed the national tour of the political comedy, GOD HELP US!, starring the late, great Ed Asner, and is preparing a production of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s THE VISIT, starring Barbara Bain. Mitch is also developing a multi-media exploration of the collective trauma humanity has faced through the pandemic with collaborators Jordan Marinov, Alberto Alvero and Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, the Music Director of the LA Philharmonic and the Paris Opera.
Mitch was the founding producer and
host of the AFI’s Great Filmmakers series
and the host of the Producers Forum at the Cannes Film Festival. He moderates
the annual Festivals and Markets panel for NALIP and has chaired or
participated on panels focusing on almost every aspect of the art and craft
of cinema and the performing arts. He hosted the Producers Forum in Cannes,
moderated Film Independent’s distribution and festivals panels, the market
panels for NALIP and is a mentor for the Latino Producers Academy. He
provides extensive story and editorial consulting to producers and
filmmakers and helps design festival, market, acquisition and distribution
strategies for their films. He regularly presents his seminars, Preparing Your Film for the Global
Marketplace and Navigating the
World’s Film Festivals and Film Markets, around the globe. In addition,
Mitch has been a guest lecturer at the School of Visual Arts in New York and taught directing and screenwriting at the prestigious School of Film and
Television at Loyola Marymount University.
Mitch is also the founder of The Film Festival
Group, a global consulting firm for festivals, filmmakers and
distribution companies. He served as Executive Director and CEO of
the Palm Springs International Film Festivals, co-created and produced First Time Fest in New York, helped create the
Arnold Sports Film Fest, produced the first Bahamas International Film
Festival, the first International Emerging Talent Film Festival in Monaco
and served for many years as the Production Director of the LA Film
Festival. He has produced tributes to Darren Aronofsky,
hosted by Martin Scorsese and Ellen Burstyn, to Nicholas Cage, hosted by
Sean Connery, to Clint Eastwood, hosted by Tony Bennett and Dustin Hoffman
and to Don Cheadle, hosted by Halle Berry.
His theatrical career took him to many of the
world’s greatest theatres and opera houses. Before his career in the arts,
Mitch could be found trodding the corridors of
the United Nations in New York as a Special Representative to the United
Nations Disarmament Programs and chairman of the World Conference on
Disarmament.
Contact:
Info@MitchLevine.net
Tel:
1.646.801.4226
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