Ruth Rachel Anderson-Avraham

BS"D Ruth Rachel Yvonne Anderson-Avraham (née Yvonne Michele Anderson) is an independent filmmaker committed to supporting the fine and visual arts as creative means to uplift and inspire to positive action. In 2006, she founded Bold World/ReelNATION, dedicated to her film financing and production activity, and Cité Cinergie/Bold World Arts, a non-profit association dedicated to uplifting and harnessing the talent of young people (ages 11-18) in the Parisian banlieues through the visual arts, while living in Paris, France. She studied film production by night at The Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, while living on the Lower East Side, then the Upper East Side, and finally in Brooklyn and working with archival and documentary film in New York City in the late 90's. While a student at Tisch, Ms. Anderson-Avraham had the honor of studying for one year under filmmaker Thierry Pathé, the well-loved NYU cinema and film production educator and mentor, grandson of the legendary French filmmaker, studio and recording mogul Charles Pathé, who, inspired by Thomas A. Edison (creator of the Phonograph, Kinetograph, and Kinetoscope) and the Lumière brothers (creators of the Cinématographe), founded Pathé Frères with his brothers Émile, Théophile, and Jacques in 1896. As an undergraduate university student in the late 80's and early 90's, she also took several defining studio art, architecture, film history, cinematography, drama and literature courses, largely focusing on the history of cinema in France and West Africa, "la Francophonie", acting for stage and screen and the contemporary literature of North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East, while studying at the University of Virginia and Université Stendhal-Grenoble 3 (Université Grenoble Alpes) in Grenoble, France. Ms. Anderson-Avraham is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the École des Hautes-Études Commerciales (Paris), and an Echols Scholar from the University of Virginia (which she ultimately chose to attend over Brown University), where she received a B.A. in both English Language & Literature and Religious Studies in 1993. She also completed advanced graduate study in International Law and International Economic Theory and Policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Her international business experience includes financial, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, and corporate transactions, as well as contract drafting and negotiations, of the highest caliber as a professional qualified in both the United States and France who has lived and worked in expert environments (including A-List film, fine arts, publishing, fashion, sports, investment banking and technology industry clients) in Geneva, Frankfurt, Paris, and Milan. As a filmmaker, she has worked primarily with non-fiction and historical fiction storytellers, and with those extraordinary people who generously give of their own lives in sharing their personal stories with them, internationally, most extensively in the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. She is dedicated to the support of worthy causes, and particularly the building of bridges and the fostering of peace among the peoples of the larger Middle East - the sacred crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa to which Erets Israel belongs, as embodied by her non-profit advocacy and educational initiatives for ISRAELrealNATION, also founded in 2006. During the course of her adult life, Ruth Rachel Anderson-Avraham (née Yvonne Michele Anderson) became a "Ba'alat Teshuba", returned to being an observant Jew over a number of years after having been raised almost completely outside of Jewish tradition. The transformation and growth of the body of her creative work rings true to this personal spiritual journey, the love and light of which she seeks to pass on to her own children someday, G-dwilling, Im Yirtseh Hashem, Insha'allah. "Those whose hope is in Hashem will have renewed strength, they will grow wings like eagles; they will run and not grow tired, they will walk and not grow weary." (Yeshayahou/Isaiah 40:31)