- Born
- Birth nameYvonne Michele Anderson
- Nickname
- Pooh Bear
- BS"D
Ruth Rachel Yvonne Anderson-Avraham (née Yvonne Michele Anderson) is an independent filmmaker committed to supporting the fine and visual arts as creative means to uplift and inspire to positive action. In 2006, she founded Bold World/ReelNATION, dedicated to her film financing and production activity, and Cité Cinergie/Bold World Arts, a non-profit association dedicated to uplifting and harnessing the talent of young people (ages 11-18) in the Parisian banlieues through the visual arts, while living in Paris, France.
She studied film production by night at The Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, while living on the Lower East Side, then the Upper East Side, and finally in Brooklyn and working with archival and documentary film in New York City in the late 90's. While a student at Tisch, Ms. Anderson-Avraham had the honor of studying for one year under filmmaker Thierry Pathé, the well-loved NYU cinema and film production educator and mentor, grandson of the legendary French filmmaker, studio and recording mogul Charles Pathé, who, inspired by Thomas A. Edison (creator of the Phonograph, Kinetograph, and Kinetoscope) and the Lumière brothers (creators of the Cinématographe), founded Pathé Frères with his brothers Émile, Théophile, and Jacques in 1896.
As an undergraduate university student in the late 80's and early 90's, she also took several defining studio art, architecture, film history, cinematography, drama and literature courses, largely focusing on the history of cinema in France and West Africa, "la Francophonie", acting for stage and screen and the contemporary literature of North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East, while studying at the University of Virginia and Université Stendhal-Grenoble 3 (Université Grenoble Alpes) in Grenoble, France.
Ms. Anderson-Avraham is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the École des Hautes-Études Commerciales (Paris), and an Echols Scholar and Walter N. Ridley Scholar from the University of Virginia (which she ultimately chose to attend over Brown University), where she received a B.A. in both English Language & Literature and Religious Studies in 1993. She also completed advanced graduate study in International Law and International Economic Theory and Policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Her international business experience includes financial, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, and corporate transactions, as well as contract drafting and negotiations, of the highest caliber as a professional qualified in both the United States and France who has lived and worked in expert environments (including A-List film, fine arts, cultural property, publishing, fashion, sports, investment banking and technology industry clients) in Geneva, Frankfurt, Paris, and Milan.
As a filmmaker, she has worked primarily with non-fiction and historical fiction storytellers, and with those extraordinary people who generously give of their own lives in sharing their personal stories with them, internationally, most extensively in the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. She is dedicated to the support of worthy causes, and particularly the building of bridges and the fostering of peace among the peoples of the larger Middle East - the sacred crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa to which Erets Israel belongs, as embodied by her non-profit advocacy and educational initiatives for ISRAELrealNATION, also founded in 2006.
During the course of her adult life, Ruth Rachel Anderson-Avraham (née Yvonne Michele Anderson) became a "Ba'alat Teshuba", returned to being an observant Jew over a number of years after having been raised almost completely outside of Jewish tradition. The transformation and growth of the body of her creative work rings true to this personal spiritual journey, the love and light of which she seeks to pass on to her own children someday, G-dwilling, Im Yirtseh Hashem, Insha'allah.
"Those whose hope is in Hashem will have renewed strength, they will grow wings like eagles; they will run and not grow tired, they will walk and not grow weary." (Yeshayahou/Isaiah 40:31)- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
- Gender / Gender identityFemale
- Formally trained in ballet and tap from childhood through young adulthood. Former competitive gymnast, cheerleading Captain, track and field MVP in high school at Norfolk Academy, where she was also a friend and prom date of fellow filmmaker William Perry Moore IV (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak), now sadly deceased.
Ms. Anderson (Ms. Anderson-Avraham) and Mr. Moore IV also served together as student volunteers on an Operation Smile Medical Mission to the Philippines during the Winter of 1988.
Fellow schoolmates (high school contemporaries) include Kira Snyder, Fabien Cousteau, Céline Cousteau (also a fellow member of the gymnastics team with Ms. Anderson (Ms. Anderson-Avraham)), Glenn Youngkin, and Marc Short. - From December 1998 to January 2000, Ms. Anderson (Ms. Anderson-Avraham) was Office Manager, Production Manager, and an Associate Producer at Moxie Firecracker Films, a documentary film production company founded by Academy Award nominated and Emmy Award winning filmmakers Liz Garbus (The Farm: Angola, USA; What Happened, Miss Simone?) and Rory Kennedy (Last Days in Vietnam; Ghosts of Abu Ghraib), New York. During the year 2000, she was an Intern for Emmy Award and Peabody Award winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson (The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords; The Murder of Emmett Till; Freedom Riders), a MacArthur Fellow and Co-Founder of Firelight Media, along with his wife, Writers Guild of America Award winning and Emmy Award nominated filmmaker Marcia Smith (The Murder of Emmett Till; Wounded Knee).
- 2007, Berlinale Talent Campus (now "Berlinale Talents"), Berlin, Germany.
- 1999-2000, Committee Member, inaugural Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition Summer Film Series (now Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy "Movies with a View"), Brooklyn, New York. In addition to advisory contribution, collaborated on the production of "A Park Grows In Brooklyn", an educational film and public service announcement for the then Coalition and Film Series, with fellow Committee Member and award-winning Producer, Lisa Cortes (Precious; Kwaku Ananse).
- 2001, Intern, Le Festival international du film contre l'exclusion et pour la tolérance (FIFET!), founded by Claudine Drame, and then sponsored by UNESCO, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France and Durban, South Africa. Helped plan and manage FIFET! participation in the Film Festival Against Racism at the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) on site in Durban, South Africa (with the co-sponsorship of Le Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l'Amitié entre les Peuples (MRAP)).
2006-2008, Ms. Anderson (Ms. Anderson-Avraham) worked with Ms. Drame, an historian and expert on the representation of the Shoah in cinema, on various projects related to FIFET! and the publication of her non-fiction work, "Des films pour le dire, reflets de la Shoah au cinéma, 1945-1985" (Les Éditions Métropolis, Prix Henri-Hertz, 2007), along with accompanying Holocaust survivor interviews, several of which Ms. Anderson (Ms. Anderson-Avraham) personally translated from filmed French language survivor interviews to English transcript, and accompanying visual aids, Paris, France. The feature-length documentary film accompanying the 2007 final publication of Ms. Drame's non-fiction historical work in DVD format is entitled, "Témoignages pour Mémoire" ("Testimony for Memory").
- The love of G-d is like the ocean, you can see its beginnings but not its end...
- With all due respect for her right to express herself, to have her own ideas, I don't agree with Catherine Deneuve (et al.). [The] #MeToo [movement] is not a question of hatred of men, but rather a question of self love as a woman who demands that men treat me with respect. A real man is a man who truly loves women, who does not impose upon women treatment ignoring their dignity as women, as human beings. (Translated from the original French into English by Bold World / ReelNATION [us].)
- Be the solution to the problem that you seek to solve.
- The thing is not only to achieve your goal, but to achieve it in the right way, in a positive way. "Means" are just as important as "ends".
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