The Creative Team
Leon Gerskovic (Director) was born in Zagreb before Croat
ia seceded from Yugoslavia. As the son of a former ambassador, he
spent his formative years in the western hemisphere. When the Berlin Wall fell, his family
returned to Croatia where his father tried to encourage Serbs and Croats to keep the
peace. In 1992, war broke out, and at age 18, Leon began taking TV crews to the front
lines for WTN, a British television news network.
He came to the United States in 1994, earned a degree in television production from Montgomery College in Maryland and established Video Palette Productions, an independent production company specializing in digital video productions. In 1998, Leon wrote, produced and directed his first film, Sufis, a fiction film which explored man’s search for soul in modern society. Leon has also worked as a cameraman and video technician for various documentary, news, corporate, and government clients.
In 2000, he was invited to be a guest speaker for
a Johns Hopkins course on Genocide and at Books and Ideas 2000 sponsored by the
Paul Peck Institute for Humanities. He has teamed up a second time with Erica
Ginsberg to co-direct Talking
Threads, a web documentary produced in response to the events of September
11.
Rob
Shire (Co-Producer, Cinematography, Sound) has
been active in the Washington/Baltimore production community since 1992. A graduate of
Montgomery College’s renowned television production program, Rob has worked as an
independent producer and freelance audio technician. As an audio technician,
Shire’s clients have included local news, Washington news bureaus, nationally
syndicated programs, and various documentaries and fiction films produced in the area.
Rob's first documentary, Building Humanity: the 1992 Jimmy Carter Work Project was
an early portrait of the Habitat for Humanity projects. It won an award from Montgomery
Community Television. He was the Director of Photography on Sufis, his first
collaboration with Leon Gerskovic. Rob represented the Crucible of War team at a
Producers Pitching Forum at the 2000 Thessaloniki Film Festival, co-sponsored by the
European Documentary Network and the Soros Documentary Fund.
Erica Ginsberg (Co-Producer, Story Editor, Web Co
ntent)
is a producer and production consultant based in the Washington DC area. Her production
company, CineCitizen Media specializes in documentaries which focus on living history.
In addition to this project, she is currently in production on Avenue of
Aspirations: 16th Street and Washington. She and Leon Gerskovic
co-produced and co-directed Talking
Threads, a web documentary produced as part of War and Peace, a collaborative project
of the D-Word Community, an online forum of
documentarians. She is also the co-founder of Docs in Progress, an organization devoted to
promoting the independent documentary community in Washington DC.
In addition to her own productions, Erica has worked on informational and training videos for the U.S. Department of State, where she works for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (formerly the U.S. Information Agency). One of these videos, Vital Link: the International Visitor Program and You won a Communicator Award of Excellence and has been distributed to embassies worldwide. Erica has also worked on the Washington Jewish Film Festival and as a research assistant on Aviva Kempner’s The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg and Catherine Wyler’s Witness to Hope. She holds an M.A. in Film and Video from American University and a B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University. Erica has also studied film in the Czech Republic and political science in Ireland.
Sandra Stojanovic and Saša Brajovic
(Cinematography, Field Producers) were
our eyes and ears in Serbia and Montenegro. They are both veterans of B-92, the
Serbian opposition television station, which was closed down during the latter part of the
Milosevic era. 
Sandra graduated from the University
of Belgrade for Film and Video Productions. She has worked on many independent movies and
documentaries and freelanced as a cinematographer for various television series. She
served as Director of Photog
raphy for the
Yugoslav film Gallows for Two which was shown at festivals in Germany and
Mexico. She recently won a national cinematography award.
Saša Brajovic also graduated from the University of Belgrade with a major in film. He worked on several 16mm shorts and was First Assistant Cameraman for the documentaries Orthodox Christian Fate and Portrait of a Artist.
Dejan Bošnjak (Field Producer) coordinated our shoot in Brcko and surrounding towns in
Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is a former law student from Mostar Bosnia who is
currently studying with a full scholarship at Georgetown University's School of Foreign
Service. Dejan also served as the Special Assistant to the Director of the OSCE in
Brcko. There he helped organize the 1996 municipal elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
helped implement the return of refugees, election results, and the monitoring of human
rights.
Scott Burgess (Original
Music/Sound Design/Post-Production Audio) has more than 10 years of experience as a
composer and sound designer, primarily for live theater, as well as short-form independent
films and educational video projects. He is a two-time recipient and nine-time
nominee of the Helen Hayes Award (the most renowned award in the
Public Communications, Inc (Fiscal Sponsor): PCI is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit public education group dedicated to producing public interest documentaries and arts projects. PCI’s past projects have included The Dream Today, a PBS special on the twentieth anniversary civil rights March on Washington; been broadcast on PBS and have won everything from an Academy Award to a CINE Gold Eagle.
Advisors
Dr. Patricia Aufderheide, Director, Center for Social Media, American University
Dejan Bošnjak, Regional Advisor
Agneza Bozic-Roberson, Political Scientist specializing in ethno-political conflict in the former Yugoslavia
Aneta Georgievska-Shine, Linguist
Dr. Myrna Goldenberg, Director of the Paul Peck Institute for the Humanities, which is funded by an NEH grant and operated in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution; Specialist in Genocide Studies
Fra. Ivo Markovic, Franciscan priest and peace activist from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Adele Schmidt, Producer, Journey Films
Rev. David Steele, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Catherine Wyler, Documentary Producer
Special Thanks to the Following Individuals for Translation Assistant for the Video and the Website:
Aneta Georgievska-Shine
Anamarija Kristic
Chris Pavsek
Sahand Sahebdivani
Adele Schmidt
Branka Sekis
Dubravka Trklja
Marija Zivanovic