Slawomir Grünberg (born 6 April 1951 in Lublin) is ławomirGrüa Polish-born naturalized American documentary producer, director and cameraman.
Early life and education
Slawomir Grünberg was born to a Jewish family in Lublin, Poland. A graduate of the Polish Film School in Łódź, he immigrated to the United States in 1981, and has since directed and produced over 45 documentaries.
Career
He is the founder and president of LOGTV, Ltd. Grünberg's film School Prayer: A Community At War (1999), screened on PBS, received the National Emmy Award. It also won The Jan Karski Award in a competition which recognizes outstanding television documentaries produced on the theme of moral courage. In 2004, Grünberg received the Dream Catcher Award, to recognize his commitment to documentary filmmaking.
Slawomir Grünberg's independent works focus on critical social, political, environmental issues, with a special interest in Jewish themes and threatened identities, and have won him international recognition.Chelyabinsk: The Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet, was awarded the Grand Prix at the International Nature & Environmental Film Festival, in Grenoble, France in 1996. In 1998, another documentary, which deals with environmental issues, From Chechnya to Chernobyl, was awarded a Grand Prix at the International Environmental Film Festival In Prague, Czech Republic and a prestigious Golden Cine Award in the US. "Fenceline: A Company Town Divided" is another environmental documentary film, awarded Best Documentary Feature by Environmental Media Association in 2003. In 2006, "Saved by Deportation: An Unknown Odyssey of Polish Jews] won Grunberg The Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Washington Jewish Film Festival.
Films recently directed by Slawomir Grünberg include: Still Life in Lodz; Karski & The Lords of Humanity , 2016 Lavr Award - the Russian “Oscar”; Grand Prix at the International Historical Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland; Nomination for The Eagles Awards - the Polish “Oscar”, Best Polish documentary – "Jewish Motives" at International Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland, Don't Cry When I'm Gone, Shimon's Returns, Santa Rosa, Castaways (co-directed with Tomasz Wiśniewski), Magda(co-directed with Katka Reszke), Coming Out Polish Style (co-directed with Katka Reszke), Trans-Action (HBO Central Europe), The Peretzniks, which premiered at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, NYC 2010, Paint What You Remember, premiered at Toronto Jewish Film Festival 2010, and Portraits of Emotion, a film about autism, which won him many international awards including: an Expression Award at Brazil's Disability Film Festival, Grand Prix at the International Film Festival "Integration - You and Me", Koszalin, Poland 2008, and Grand Prix at the Belgrade International Film Festival, 2010. In 2010, Slawomir co-produced and shot In the Name of Their Mothers: The Story of Irena Sendler by Mary Skinner. Docboat 2009 - Warsaw Nonfiction E-Festival, granted Slawomir a prestigious award for Internationally Acclaimed Documentary Filmmaker with Polish Roots.
Grünberg's director of photography credits include: HBO's Legacy, which received an Academy Award Nomination for the best documentary feature in 2001, and HBO's Sister Rose's Passion, which won Best in Documentary Short at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2004 and received an Academy Award Nomination for best documentary short in 2005. As a principal director of photography Slawomir shot over 70 documentaries, seven of which received Emmy Nominations and two of which received Emmy Awards. Slawomir has also been a contributing director of photography for the PBS series: Frontline; AIDS Quarterly, American Masters, NOVA, Health Quarterly, Inside Gorbachev’s USSR with Hedrick Smithand People’s Century, ABC, NBC, HBO, Lifetime, Discovery, Lifetime and HBO. Slawomir had worked with such filmmakers as: Tod Lending (Legacy), Roger Weisberg (Breaking the Cycle), Lee Grant (Confronting the Crisis) and Albert Maysles.
Slawomir Grünberg is a recipient of Guggenheim, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Soros Justice Media Fellowships.
Documentary films by Slawomir Grünberg have been screened & some of them made their way to permanent collections of various prestigious institutions including: Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, Museo Memoria y Tolerancia, Mexico City, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, South Africa, Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.