Ferne Pearlstein, the director of the film The Last Laugh

Ferne Pearlstein, the director of the film The Last Laugh will be speaking in the seminar that Prof. Nancy Berg and Henry Schvey are currently offering, Staging Atrocity.

Ms. Pearlstein is a renowned, prize-winning director. The Last Laugh deals with the controversial subject of Humor and the Holocaust.

WashU Faculty, Students and Staff are encouraged to view this film prior to the seminar, access is available to WU attendees by visiting the Kanopy website. Community members should contact their local public library or visit Amazon Prime.

This was a live zoom event.

Ferne Pearlstein is a prize-winning cinematographer, writer, director, and editor whose work has won numerous awards and been screened and broadcast around the world. Her most recent documentary, The Last Laugh-which she directed, produced, photographed, and edited-had its world premiere at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, beginning a run of over a hundred festivals in the US and abroad, including Hot Docs, BFI London, Traverse City, IDFA, Rome, Jerusalem, San Francisco Jewish, Traverse City, Chicago International, and many others.

An acclaimed documentary director of photography with dozens of films to her credit, she won the Excellence in Cinematography Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival for her work on Ramona Diaz's Imelda, a feature documentary about Imelda Marcos. Pearlstein is one of only a handful of female cinematographers featured in Kodak's long-running "On Film" ad campaign in the pages of American Cinematographer magazine.

This event is co-sponsored by the Performing Arts Department and the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies.