André Weinfeld

Born on April 6, 1947 in Paris (France), André Weinfeld is a French and American film and television producer, director, screenwriter, photographer and journalist. After receiving a Master's Degree in Psychology and French Literature at the Sorbonne University, André Weinfeld - the son of Jean Weinfeld, a Bauhaus architect and Nina Lapina Weinfeld, a writer - was admitted in 1966, after a year of preparation for the entrance examination, as number 1 out of 300, at the highly regarded French Film School "Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques" (IDHEC) . He dropped out, however, after less than a semester, because he "didn't like it". Weinfeld further complained in an interview that the education there was "way too conventional". Other famous drop-outs from IDHEC include BAFTA Film Award Winner Louis Malle and Academy Award winner Volker Schlöndorff. First, a Camera operator and then a Cinematographer to several French "New Wave" short and full-length feature films (collaborating with, among others, directors Philippe Garrel, Jean Eustache, Éric Rohmer, Néstor Almendros , Dennis Berry, Jackie Raynal, etc.) André Weinfeld became - at age 19 - one of the youngest television directors, producers and journalists in France. For the next 10 years, André directed, produced and reported over 70 weekly news and documentary magazine programs and French Network Specials, covering everything from fashion to the 1960s and 1970s rock and roll and pop scenes in "Swinging London" and in the US for the hit TV Documentary series "Bouton Rouge" at the Monterey International Pop Festival, the Woodstock Festival, working with many major musicians, among them Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Cream, The Who, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, etc. Later on, this time as a Special Envoy and War correspondent, André accepted several "hard news" assignments to Israel, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon during the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War and Saigon during the Vietnam War. After serving as a director of several feature and documentary films during his military service in the French Army Cinema Service (ECPA), André Weinfeld went on to write and direct his first feature short La bonne nouvelle (1974) (The Good News), with late French "New Wave" director Claude Chabrol, Thomas Chabrol, Christine Boisson, Michel Duchaussoy, Mary Marquet and Daniel Prévost, which was awarded the Grand Prize at the International London Film Festival and thereafter distributed in France by Warner-Columbia. André then worked as a screenwriter for several French films, among them the hit The Key Is in the Door (1978) (La clé sur la porte), starring French stars Patrick Dewaere and Annie Girardot. Having met actress Raquel Welchin Paris in 1977, André moved to live and work in the USA in 1977. He started his own Production and Video Distribution Company while producing, writing and directing From Raquel with Love (1980), a variety TV Special with Raquel Welch, Mickey Rooney and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.. He then went on to produce and direct Raquel's Multi-Platinum collection of Fitness and Yoga videos. Divorced from Raquel Welch in 1990, André Weinfeld is now living in New York with his 22-year-old son Zachary Weinfeld and actively working on several feature film and television projects both in the USA and France.