Adam Benzine is a British filmmaker and journalist. He received critical appraisal and widespread acclaim for his HBO documentary '' Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah'', which examined the life and work of French director

Claude Lanzmann Claude Lanzmann (; 27 November 1925 – 5 July 2018) was a French filmmaker known for the Holocaust documentary film '' Shoah'' (1985). Early life Lanzmann was born on 27 November 1925 in Paris, France, the son of Paulette () and Armand Lanzmann. ...

. The film earned Benzine an Oscar nomination in the Best Documentary (Short Subject) category at the

88th Academy Awards The 88th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2015 and took place on February 28, 2016, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, 5:30 p.m. PST. Dur ...

, in addition to nominations from the

Grierson Awards The Grierson Awards are awards set up by The Grierson Trust to recognise innovative and exciting documentary films, created to commemorate the life and work of the pioneering Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson. The inaugural Awards w ...

, the

Canadian Screen Awards The Canadian Screen Awards (french: link=no, Les prix Écrans canadiens) are awards given for artistic and technical merit in the film industry recognizing excellence in Canadian film, English-language television, and digital media (web series) p ...

, the

IDA Documentary Awards International Documentary Association (IDA), founded in 1982, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) that promotes nonfiction filmmakers, and is dedicated to increasing public awareness for the documentary genre. Their major program areas are: Advocacy, Filmm ...

, the Banff Rockie Awards and the

Cinema Eye Honors The Cinema Eye Honors are awards recognizing excellence in nonfiction or documentary filmmaking and include awards for the disciplines of directing, producing, cinematography and editing. The awards are presented each January in New York and have b ...

. The documentary took four years to complete. Benzine's interview with Lanzmann was Lanzmann's first since 1985, the year ''Shoah'' was finished. Benzine currently serves as the Canadian Bureau Chief for British news publisher ''C21 Media'', before which he served as Associate Editor for Canadian non-fiction news publisher ''

Realscreen Brunico Communications is a Canadian magazine publishing company."Desktop tabloid publishing firm sports 2 publications and a profit". ''The Globe and Mail'', October 9, 1989. The company specializes primarily in online trade magazines serving medi ...

''. Prior to his career in film, he studied BSc Multimedia Technology & Design at

Brunel University London Brunel University London is a public research university located in the Uxbridge area of London, England. It was founded in 1966 and named after the Victorian engineer and pioneer of the Industrial Revolution, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In June 1 ...

and MA Magazine Journalism at

City University London City, University of London, is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, and a member institution of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1894 as the Northampton Institute, and became a university when The City Univ ...

before working as Online Editor for British weekly trade newspaper ''

Music Week ''Music Week'' is a trade publication for the UK record industry distributed via a website and a monthly print magazine. It is published by Future. History Founded in 1959 as '' Record Retailer'', it relaunched on 18 March 1972 as ''Music W ...

''. An Op-ed Benzine published in the ''

National Post The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper available in several cities in central and western Canada. The paper is the flagship publication of Postmedia Network and is published Mondays through Saturdays, with ...

'', in September 2019, compared the

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...

(TIFF) with the

Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival h ...

. Benzine quoted

Kiva Reardon Kiva Reardon is a Canadian film programmer, writer, editor, and commentator. Background Reardon grew up in Toronto, and credits watching Elwy Yost's long-running ''Saturday Night at the Movies'' as her first introduction to film studies. Reardo ...

, at TIFF, who disputed Venice's festival's director, Alberta Barbera's claim that the reason he hadn't scheduled more films from female directors was that they just weren't making enough good films. In 2020, he made the documentary '' The Curve'', which is about America's response to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. The film was released on the internet a week before the 2020 United States presidential election.

References

External links

* British directors British journalists British documentary filmmakers Artists from California Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Alumni of Brunel University London {{UK-film-bio-stub