Rina Taraseiskey – Executive Director

The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Rina Taraseiskey has produced films since 2000 and is the founder of Blue Lemon Productions, which is dedicated to creating socially conscious documentaries and exhibitions. In 2016, Taraseiskey produced and directed a feature documentary and curated a museum exhibit about the magazine Vedem (“In the Lead”), a teen-authored magazine that was the only underground publication to be regularly produced by Nazi concentration camp prisoners. Taraseiskey has also created and produced programs for the Discovery Channel, History Channel, Style Network, Travel Channel and Fox Kids. Taraseiskey worked on the Oscar-nominated Holocaust documentary “Prisoner of Paradise” and helped create and implement the international educational outreach program for the Oscar-winning film “The Last Days.” Her artistic endeavors also include founding an art gallery featuring emerging artists in Los Angeles. Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, Taraseiskey, whose grandfather led a Lithuanian partisan group in the Kovno Ghetto, received an MBA with honors from McGill University, and is fluent in Russian and Hebrew.

Danny King – Director, Writer

Danny King’s journalism career dates back to 1999 and includes work in documentary films, books, wire services, newspapers, weekly consumer and trade publications, websites, news blogs and radio. In addition to his work on Vedem Underground, King has served as hotels editor for Travel Weekly, the West Coast consumer reporter for Bloomberg News and real estate reporter for the Los Angeles Business Journal. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, Daily Variety, Seattle Times and Orlando Sentinel. King has a masters degree from UCLA and an undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley.

Michael Murphy – Creative Director

Michael Murphy has been a design professional in the Los Angeles area since 1997. He is currently an art director for an advertising agency. Michael published the photography book

Santa Monica: A Look Back to 1902 from Today and curated the companion show at the Santa Monica Museum.

ADVISORS

Mark Jonathan Harris – Film Consultant

Mark Jonathan Harris has written, produced or directed three Academy Award-winning documentaries throughout his 35-plus years of filmmaking. “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport,” which was produced for Warner Brothers, won an Academy Award for Best Feature Length Documentary for 2000, while “The Long Way Home,” produced for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, won the award in 1997. In 1968, “The Redwoods,” which was produced for the Sierra Club, won Best Short Documentary. Harris has published articles in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and TV Guide, and has written five children’s novels.

Michael Berenbaum – Exhibit Consultant

Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and filmmaker who specializes in the study of the Holocaust. He served as Deputy Director of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust (1979–1980), Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) (1988–1993), and Director of the USHMM’s Holocaust Research Institute (1993–1997). Berenbaum played a leading role in the creation of the USHMM and the content of its permanent exhibition. From 1997 to 1999, he served as President and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, and subsequently as Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, located at Los Angeles’s American Jewish University (formerly known as the University of Judaism).

Dorit Cypis – Art Consultant

Dorit Cypis is an artist, educator, and mediator with one foot in the studio and one foot in the street. Cypis’s presentations are often immersive laboratories abstracting form and meaning to expose paradox and possibility. Her work has been presented at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, International Center of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Orange County Museum, Walker Art Center, Musee d’Art Contemporain/Montreal, Musee des Beaux Arts/Bruxelles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Orange County Museum of Art. Her essays on aesthetics and conflict have been published by Shifter, ACR Journal, Art21, Journal of Art + Protest and Routledge Press. Born in Tel Aviv, Dorit lives in Los Angeles.

Dr. Marilyn J. Harran – Educational Consultant

With a PhD from Stanford University, Professor Harran is holder of the Stern Chair in Holocaust Education, and the founding director of the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education and the Sala and Aron Samueli Holocaust Memorial Library at Chapman University, where she teaches courses on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. As the Rodgers Center’s founding director, she has established a multi-faceted program with academic minor, distinguished lecture series, library, and community outreach, including a contest reaching 5,000 middle and high school students each year. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the International Research & Exchanges Board. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a Mellon Fellow at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Spirit of Anne Frank Award in 2008. She is currently working on several projects, including co-authoring a Holocaust survivor memoir, and is a member of the governing board of the Association of Holocaust Organizations.

Karel Slach – Cinematographer

Karel Slach is a renowned Czech cinematographer. He has worked on several the documentary films directed by Karel Vachek, winner of the 1990 Berlinale Golden Camera. Slach worked on Vathek’s groundbreaking films whose mix of cinema verité, improvisation, and staged scenes created a fascinating perspective on the political and intellectual history of the Czech Republic.