Ben Selkow is the director/producer/director of photography/writer of A Summer in the Cage for cable release on Sundance Channel on October 22, 2007, an international film festival tour, and an educational/institutional outreach campaign. He also is the Producer of The North Carolina Project , a feature-length documentary film about fugitive bomber Eric Robert Rudolph for director Jim Chambers' Field Hands Productions. The film is intended for theatrical, cable and DVD release in 2008. Along with running Field Hands Productions, Ben oversees all phases of pre-production, production (shooting with cinematographer Maryse Alberti) and post-production with editor Susanne Rostock for The North Carolina Project. Before producing at Field Hands, he associate produced for Fox Sports Net's Beyond the Glory (2000-2001). Ben also was a field producer/camera operator for a series of street basketball DVD's entitled Straight from the Streets (2000). He began his film experience as a production assistant and assistant director on feature films such as Meet the Parents (2000), What Lies Beneath (2000), Center Stage (2000) and Random Hearts (1999), television shows such as Sex in the City and The Sopranos. Ben began his film career interning at Tribeca Productions and Warner Brothers story departments. Ben first became interested in film after seeing his mother, a psychologist, being featured in the National Film Board of Canada documentary L'Interdit (1976), about an alternative commune for treating schizophrenics in Canada. He is a screenwriter, an avid photographer, traveler, and basketball player. Ben is a member of the Independent Film Project (IFP) and is fiscally sponsored by the International Documentary Association (IDA). Ben was born in Montréal, Canada. He holds Honors B.A.'s in Film Studies and African-American Studies from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut where he received the W.E.B. DuBois Academic Award for Overall Excellence and a certificate from the School for International Training in Tanzania, East Africa. He resides in New York City.

Blog Entries by Ben Selkow

The Mentally Ill: Oft-Invisible Artists

Posted October 25, 2007 | 04:21 PM (EST)


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I have been blogging about my feature-length documentary on my friend Sam who is battling bipolar disorder, also know as manic depressive illness. The documentary extends in many interesting directions, but one theme I want to explore further is the marginalized voices of...

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Our Brush with Homeland Security: Can Better Understanding of Mental Illness be Legislated?

Posted October 22, 2007 | 12:26 PM (EST)


June 21, 2002. JFK airport in New York. Just nine months after September 11th, my friend and I have just been asked to disembark our flight to California by the airline's head of security. My jaw is a vice. I grind my teeth. It's 9:00 a.m.

My...

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A Summer in the Cage

Posted October 16, 2007 | 04:24 PM (EST)


A Summer in the Cage is my feature-length documentary chronicling my friend Sam's battle with manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder (a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person's mood, energy, and ability to function). Sam and I started out making a film together about street basketball...

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