Biographies

Director Co-Producer JACKY COMFORTY, has been a filmmaker for over 20 years in the United States, Germany and Israel. He is experienced in a range of genres from comedy and television dramas to documentaries. He is known for his interviewing techniques and oral history projects and other on-camera discussions that are genuine, dramatically effective, meaningful and in-depth. He is fluent in Hebrew, German and Bulgarian as well as English. His most recent awards include the 1997 Cine Golden Eagle for Through a Glass Lightly, about three self-taught Chicago artists; 1997 Golden Hugo for Step by Step: Heather's Story, a documentary about a young girl with Down Syndrome and her transition and inclusion into her neighborhood school. He is currently completing a documentary on Bulgarian Jews during the Holocaust. His company Comforty Media Concepts has produced films in Germany, Israel, Bulgaria, Spain and Switzerland. He has received grants from numerous foundations.

Writer-Producer JERRI ZBIRAL, operates The Collected Image, providing vintage and contemporary photography to museums and collectors. Because of her fluency in the language and her familiarity with the culture, she has a special interest in Czech photography. In 1990, she co-founded the Chicago Photographic Print Fair, a venue for the exhibition and sale of fine arts photography, sponsored by the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

An M.F.A. graduate of the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, Zbiral has received grants for documentary photography projects on native Americans in James Bay, Canada, and on the Laotian Hmong living in Uptown in Chicago. She has had many exhibitions of this work, and published an account of her experiences in Shaman's Drum magazine. She ran the photography program at the Inner-City Photo workshop in the mid-1970s and the photography program at the Uptown Center Hull House. There, she pioneered the use of photography with deaf children. She and Teller have received numerous grants for arts and social issues projects.

Writer-Producer ALAN TELLER is a partner in the museum exhibit design firm Abrams, Teller & Madsen. He specializes in developing ideas and ways of expressing them through exhibits. His projects include exhibits for the State Historical Museum of Wisconsin, the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, the Shedd Aquarium, the Detroit History Museum, the Northern Indiana Historical Society, Chicago Park District, Geneva Historical Society, Lake County Museum and others. He led the design team for the Zell Holocaust Memorial at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies.

In the 1970s, Teller founded a series of inner city photography programs throughout the Chicagoland area. This work resulted in an Illinois Arts Council publication Photography in the Classroom. He taught photography at Columbia College, Purdue University, the Chicago Art Institute and the Field Museum of Natural History, where he worked as photographic researcher. He has lectured and published extensively on arts, education and community issues. Teller is currently Chair of the Arts Advocacy Committee of the Evanston Arts Council.