Laura Bialis

Filmmaker

What is Laura Bialis known for?

Laura Bialis is an American-Israeli filmmaker, recognized for her work on impactful documentary films such as "Rock in the Red Zone" (2015) and "Refusenik" (2008). She was born in Los Angeles, California, and spent her formative years in both Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, California. One of the notable institutions she attended during her early years was San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara.

Bialis' career kicked off with a summer internship at Rod Lathim's Access Theatre, a theater company renowned for nurturing performers with disabilities. She later attended Stanford University, specializing in wartime and post-war Eastern European studies. Her fascination with underground resistance movements grew during her time at Stanford, where she also conducted research at the Hoover Institution Archive. She furthered her education at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television, earning a Master of Fine Arts in Production.

Her early inclinations towards narrative filmmaking shifted towards documentary after the positive reception of her short documentary, "Attitude" (1997), a class project at USC which depicted a day in the life of a young, blind, and partially amputated athlete, actor, and musician. Another one of her significant early works includes "Daybreak Berlin," a film based on the memoirs of German-American artist Ilse-Margret Vogel.

Establishing a fruitful partnership with her classmates Broderick Fox and Sarah Levy at USC, they ventured into the remote Lithuanian countryside, to film Holocaust survivor Judy Meisel in search for her father's final resting place. The result was the highly regarded feature documentary, "Tak for Alt – Survival of a Human Spirit." Bialis also founded the Foundation for Documentary Projects, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating documentaries and educational materials on historical and social issues.

The documentary "Tak for Alt" presents the life journey of Judy Meisel, from her tragic experiences during the Holocaust to her inspiring crusade for civil rights in the United States. The film, whose title translates to "Thanks for All" in Danish, was widely acclaimed and deemed “one of the outstanding films of 1999” by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. It was featured in the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, aired on PBS, and won the Anti-Defamation League's Dore Schary Award. Considered a major contribution to Holocaust education, "Tak for Alt" has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of high school students as part of the accompanying curriculum guide.