Eugene Jarecki

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Eugene Jarecki is an award-winning dramatic and documentary filmmaker based in New York.

His works include Why We Fight, which won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Quest of the Carib Canoe, and Season of the Lifterbees.

[edit] Career

Eugene is the brother of filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Nicholas Jarecki. He attended Princeton and New York University. After working for some years as a director of stage plays, Jarecki turned to film.

In 1992, after training at Princeton University as a stage director, Jarecki's first short subject Season Of The Lifterbees premiered at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival before winning both a Student Academy Award and the Time Warner Grand Prize at the Aspen Film Festival.

His film The Trials of Henry Kissinger was released theatrically to critical acclaim in 130 U.S. cities. Winner of the 2002 Amnesty International Award, the film was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and has been broadcast in over thirty countries. In 2002, Trials was selected to launch the Sundance Channel's DOCday venture as well BBC's prestigious digital channel, BBC Four.

In addition to his work in film, Jarecki is also the Founder and Executive Director of The Eisenhower Project, an academic public policy group, dedicated in the spirit of Dwight D. Eisenhower, to studying the forces that shape American foreign policy. He is a visiting fellow at Brown University's (see[1]) Watson Institute for International Studies.

[edit] Quotes

From BBC Storyville Interview about Why We Fight:

"It really followed on from the experience we had making The Trials of Henry Kissinger. That film came out in about 130 U.S. cities, and in every one I met with audiences and talked about the film. I thought I had made a film about US foreign policy but the audiences seemed to be most interested in talking about Henry Kissinger the man. To me, that felt politically impotent because the forces that are driving American foreign policy are so much larger than any one man. With the next film I wanted to go further - I didn't want to stop at an easy villain or a simple scapegoat. I wanted to have a much more holistic approach that really took on the whole system."