Zev Braun

Chicago-born Braun has been a successful and honored filmmaker for over 30 years. In 1964, his production of "Goldstein" won the Prix De la Nouvelle Critique at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1974, his co-production of Maximilian Schell's "The Pedestrian" won the Golden Globe Award as Best Foreign Film and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category. His production of "The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane", starring Jodie Foster and Martin Sheen, was voted Best Horror Film by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. In 1986, Braun again teamed up with director Schell to co-produce "Marlene", which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature along with winning the New York Film Critics Award, The National Society of Film Critics Award and the National Board of Review Award. Braun's all-consuming interest in filmmaking led him fresh from studying Humanities and Classic Arts at the University of Chicago to enter movies while still serving as President of Braun International, his family's packaging firm. Some of Mr. Braun's other productions include: "Angela", starring Sophia Loren and John Huston; "Freedom Road", starring Muhammad Ali and Kris Kristofferson; "The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu", starring Peter Sellers and Helen Mirren; and "Where are the Children", starring Jill Clayburgh and Frederick Forrest. The 1987-88 television season saw the company bring to the screen a two-hour movie-for-television, "Stillwatch", starring Lynda Carter and Angie Dickinson; a four-hour mini-series, "Murder Ordained", starring JoBeth Williams, Keith Carradine and Terry Kinney; a two-hour NBC movie, "The Father Clements Story, starring Louis Gossett, Jr., Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Carroll O'Connor (winner of the Christopher Award and CEBA Award). "Tour of Duty", the highly acclaimed weekly prime-time series about the Vietnam War, also premiered in 1987 and ran for three successful seasons on CBS. Other television series from Mr. Braun include "Murphy's Law", starring George Segal, which ran on ABC and "Bagdad Cafe", starring Whoopie Goldberg and Jean Stapleton for CBS. In 1991, Braun produced "A Seduction in Travis County", a two-hour movie for CBS, starring Lesley Ann Warren, Peter Coyote and Jean Smart. Expanding into the cable marketplace, he produced "Split Images", a two-hour movie based upon the best selling novel by Elmore Leonard and starring Gregory Harrison. In 1994, Braun produced the critically praised four-hour mini-series "Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills for CBS starring Edward James Olmos and Beverly D'Angelo. Also that year at CBS was "Dominick Dunne's 919 Fifth Avenue", a two-hour pilot movie that starred James Marsden and Denise Richards. In 1996, "Abducted: A Father's Love, a two-hour NBC movie starring Chris Noth, Peter MacNichol and Stepfanie Krammer, turned out to be one of the highest rated television movies for the year and was highly acclaimed, as well. "Lethal Vows", starring John Ritter and Marg Helgenberger, aired on CBS in 1999, and also proved extremely successful. Braun then produced "Edges of the Lord", a feature film shot in Poland and starring Haley Joel Osment and Willem Dafoe, distributed by Miramax Films. He executive produced the CBS 2005 May Sweeps entry, "Amber Frey: Witness for the Prosecution" starring Janel Moloney. Most recently, Braun won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Movie for Television for the highly rated movie he produced for Lifetime Television, "A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story", directed by Agnieszka Holland starring Mercedes Ruehl. Braun is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, as well as the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. He serves on the Board of Trustees for The American Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR) and the Board of Directors for The Heart Touch Project. Zev Braun was also a founding member of the Board of Directors for GIRF (the Gastro-Intestinal Research Foundation) of the University of Chicago hospitals as well as the Chairman of the Board for the International Kidney Institute at UCLA. Braun also served as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Saban Vaccine Institute. He was awarded the City of Hope's Golden Key for his work in connection with this organization.