Noah Berlow
Noah Berlow - Producer, Director
Award winning filmmaker Noah Berlow is a visionary storyteller who straddles two worlds—the world of entertainment and the world of serious documentaries that educate, raise consciousness and help bring about social change.
In his most outstanding success to date, Berlow produced and edited a documentary feature on female genital mutilation (FMG) in Kurdistan entitled Our World: Dropping the Knife – Kurdistan. Partners in the project included two fearless young Kurdish filmmakers, producer John Chua, HIVOS, an international humanitarian organization in the Netherlands, Amnesty International who also offered their production facilities in Amsterdam, The Guardian newspaper and BBC.
For his achievements in the art of filmmaking and demonstrated skill and effectiveness in telling stories visually that reflect and impact culture, filmmaker Noah Berlow is the winner of the Outstanding Young Alumni Award for 2014.
When the film was viewed by the Kurdish Parliament in late 2011 under the title Handful of Ash, with the support of Muslim clerics, the Parliament responded by outlawing the practice. The clerics also issued a fatwa, and edict, against FGM declaring it “an injustice…a crime against women.” Subsequently, The Guardian and BBC picked up the distribution rights to the film. On October 25, 2013, it was broadcast to a potential audience of 30 million viewers on BBC Arab TV further impacting contemporary culture in the broader Muslim world. (A 16-minute web version of the 90 minute film can be viewed at http://www.theguardian.com/society/video/2013/oct/24/fgm-film-changed-the-law-kurdistan-video)
Despite being known in L.A. as a go-to filmmaker for music videos, behind the scenes music documentaries featuring musicians like SLASH, SULLY ERNA, and the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS and directing over 100 video shoots for RollingStone.com and USmagazine.com featuring celebrities like JENNIFER LAWRENCE, LORDE, & DAFT PUNK, editing emotionally difficult material is not new to Berlow. Berlow worked full-time in the Research & Education Department of Steven Spielberg’s SHOAH Visual History Foundation editing testimonies of Holocaust survivors for documentaries and educational shorts. Berlow’s credits at the SHOAH Foundation include editing the Foundation’s Award Winning Documentary, Recollections: Eye Witnesses Remember the Holocaust, which won the BAFTA Award for the Best Learning in the Secondary Education Category in 2007.
Since 2011 other highlights in Berlow’s career include producing and editing two programs shown on VH1's Palladia network — The Journey to Avalon and Avalon Live, the feature film Video Girl, which had a theatrical run in AMC theaters and airs continuously on the BET network-- as well as receiving Best Documentary at the Memphis International Film Festival and numerous international awards for the documentary Kumpania--Flamenco Los Angeles. Noah was the Director / Editor for a documentary film on legendary guitarist SLASH, which was included as a bonus disc on the album APOCALYPTIC LOVE.