Courtesy of Sandy Smolan

Curiosity Expert: Sandy Smolan

Film Director

• Sandy Smolan Pictures
• New York Times: 'Rachel River': Long Journey from Dream to Screen

Mr. Smolan is an award-winning feature, television, and documentary director whose films have been shown extensively theatrically, on television, on the Web and in many international film festivals. He has directed for all the major U.S. networks, as well for HBO, PBS, and Showtime.

His critically acclaimed debut feature film Rachel River, was nominated for the grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and took awards for best cinematography and a special jury prize for actress Viveca Lindfors.

His television movies include The Last Soldier for HBO, the mini-series Beach Girls with Rob Lowe and Julia Ormonda for Lifetime, A Place to be for CBS and Taking a Stand, an Emmy award-winning film with Betty Buckley for ABC, for which he was also nominated for best director.

As a television director his credits include the acclaimed pilot for the series Middle Ages, as well as over 50 network series including Brothers & Sisters with Sally Field and Calista Flockheart, October Road, Eli Stone, Everwood with Treat Williams, ED, The O.C., Dawson's Creek, with Katie Holmes and Michelle Phillips, Legacy, Greek, LA LAW, Dangerous Minds, Ally McBeal, Chicago Hope and Northern Exposure.

He has become one of the leading directors creating original programming for the Internet and recently directed the ten-part web series In Gayle We Trust for nbc.com and the web series First Day for Alloy Entertainment, winner of a 2010 Advertising Age Media Vanguard Award.

Smolan's documentary 12 stones, about the transformation of a group of illiterate women in southern Nepal recently won the jury prize for best short documentary at the Tallahassee and Newport Beach Film Festivals. He has also produced and directed many other documentaries, including films for The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and for public television. He lived in North Africa for six months shooting The Maghreb Journals, a haunting documentary about the northernmost region of the Sahara and was the associate producer of two network documentaries for CBS News; The Cowboy, the Craftsman and the Ballerina with Morley Safer and Juilliard: A Life in Music, narrated by Charles Karat and winner of the Peabody Award.

Mr. Smolan was a featured speaker at the 2010 EG Conference in Monterey, California, and the 2010 INK Conference in Association with TED, in Lavasa, India.

His work can be viewed at www.luminous-content.com.