Deirdre Fishel has been writing and directing documentaries and dramas for 20 years now; almost all centering on women's lives. Her life's goal is to create complex, realistic portraits of women that challenge mainstream stereotypes and work to improve women's lives.
Deirdre started her career at WNYC-TV where she produced a half-hour program on women community organizers working to save the South Bronx. She went on to write and direct SEPARATE SKIN, an award-winning drama that was distributed by Women Make Movies and a full-length documentary about working mothers, THE BEST OF BOTH. Her dramatic feature film, RISK, premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival and had a theatrical, as well as a wide video and international release.
She went on to direct the documentary STILL DOING IT:The Intimate Lives of Women Over 65 (2004) which premiered at SXSW and has been broadcast in fifteen countries worldwide.
In 1995, Deirdre started Mind's Eye Productions dedicated to producing cutting edge educational films. DEALING WITH TEEN DATING ABUSE: Matters Of Choice received a CINE Golden Eagle. Last year Mind's Eye produced an on-line video exploring college mental health and suicide for the New York Times Magazine.
She is currently directing a documentary about her personal journey having children alone and the reality that alternative families are statistically becoming the norm. Deirdre is also co-producing “THE REST I MAKE UP”: Documenting Irene about visionary, Cuban dramatist Maria Irene Fornes.
Deirdre attended the American Film Institute's master's directing program and Brown University. She is on the faculty of the New School University.
She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and daughters Lucia and Maeve.
Diana Holtzberg is Vice President of Films Transit International, a leading worldwide documentary film sales company with a catalogue of highly acclaimed films, many of which have won Grand Jury and Audience Awards at preeminent film festivals throughout the world as well as Emmys, Peabodys, duPonts, BAFTA’s, and Oscar nominations. She has been working for Films Transit since 2001.
Diana also executive produces and acts as creative consultant on a select number of films each year. Examples include: THE ART OF FAILURE, THE DICTATOR HUNTER, END OF THE CENTURY: THE STORY OF THE RAMONES, IMAGINARY WITNESS: Hollywood and the Holocaust, HELD HOSTAGE IN COLOMBIA, PUCKER UP: The Fine Art of Whistling, LOVING & CHEATING, and STILL DOING IT: The Intimate Lives Of Women Over 65.
Diana conducts film workshops throughout the world and has sat on panels at the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, IDFA, Sunnyside of the Doc, NYON, Guadalajara, Full Frame, Hot Docs, Galway Film Festival, and Encounters in South Africa. She is on the Documentary Committee at the Paley Center for Media.
Diana began her career at SPIN Magazine and then worked at Inc. Magazine and Details Magazine before moving into film. During this time she produced TV specials for MTV (while at SPIN) and for Fox Sports Network (while at DETAILS).
She is the co-author of three widely read documentary industry articles: The Current State of the International Marketplace For Documentary Films (for the IFP), Feeling Festive: Strategies for Taking Your Film on the Festival Circuit, and Distribution To The Max (both for International Documentary Magazine). Diana wrote and edited numerous articles while a contributing writer and editor for the now defunct POWER Magazine, and is the credited ghostwriter of The Warrior Diet (Dragondoor, 2002).
She received a Bachelor of Arts from George Washington University and a Certificate in Film from New York University.
