Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen
Director and Producer Daniel Raim, Producer Sasha Berman
Logline
The fall of 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of “Fiddler on the Roof,” the film Pauline Kael (The New Yorker) called “the most powerful movie musical ever made.” Narrated by Jeff Goldblum, FIDDLER’S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN captures the humor and drama of director Norman Jewison’s quest to recreate the lost world of Jewish life in Tsarist Russia and re-envision the beloved stage hit as a wide-screen epic.
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Daniel Raim puts us in the director’s chair and in Jewison’s heart and mind, drawing on behind-the-scenes footage and never-before-seen stills as well as original interviews with Jewison, Topol, composer John Williams, production designer Robert F. Boyle, film critic Kenneth Turan, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and actresses Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, and Neva Small (Tevye’s daughters). The film explores how the experience of making “Fiddler” deepens Jewison as an artist and revives his soul.
Daniel Raim - Director, Producer
Academy Award-Nominated filmmaker Daniel Raim attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Raim is known for his documentaries about overlooked artists of Hollywood’s Golden Age, including “The Man on Lincoln’s Nose,” nominated for the 2001 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short Subject. Raim’s 2015 doc “Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story” premiered as an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for The Golden Eye (L’Œil d’or, le prix du documentaire – Cannes). In addition to his theatrical films, Daniel has written, produced, and directed 28 original documentaries for the Criterion Collection about cinema masters, including John Cassavetes, Buster Keaton, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Kelly Reichardt. In 2019, Raim directed and produced the TCM feature documentary “Image Makers: The Adventures of America’s Pioneer Cinematographers.”
Sasha Berman - Producer
Sasha Berman has been handling national publicity for theatrical releases of foreign language, documentary, and independent films for over 20 years. Prior to that time, she was a distributor and an exhibitor of indie films. She also consults on theatrical film distribution for independent films and is the personal publicist for Emmy-winning director Maria Schrader (“Unorthodox”).
Project logline and bios courtesy of the grantees.