January 30, 2004

Filmmaker/Activists David Rintels, Victoria Riskin to Discuss Difficulties of Making Films About Changing World Order

Bill Schlotter

Acclaimed filmmakers David Rintels and Victoria Riskin often have drawn their stories from the well of historic world-changing events.

The couple has brought to life tales set in the Confederate Army prison camp at Andersonville, S.C., the post-World War II war-crime trials in Nuremburg, Germany, the intellectual oppression of the Cold War Soviet Union, and other places steeped in politics and intrigue.

Putting such events on the screen isn't easy.

Rintels and Riskin will tell an audience at the University of California, Santa Barbara about the challenges of their craft in "World Order and Docudrama," Monday, Feb. 9 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the McCune Conference Room (Room 6020) of the Humanities and Social Sciences Building.

The lecture, which will feature film clips from the couple's politically oriented docudramas and other films, is free and open to the public. It is part of the series, "America and the Reshaping of a New World Order: Normative Implications, Cultural Constraints," that is sponsored by the UCSB Department of English's American Cultures and Global Contexts Center, the Global and International Studies Program, and is supported by a Critical Issues in America grant that is administered by the Office of the Provost and the College of Letters and Science.

Both Rintels and Riskin, who are married to each other, have forged highly successful careers in the film business, both together and apart.

Rintels won Emmy awards for his made-for-television movies "Clarence Darrow,"

(1973) and "Fear on Trial" (1975).

Other acclaimed works have included "Sakharov"

(1984), the story of Soviet dissident Andre Sakharov; "Washington: Behind Closed Doors" (1977), a miniseries about the Nixon Administration; and "Day One" (1989), a look at the Manhattan Project and American efforts to build an atomic bomb before the close of World War II.

Riskin, the daughter of actress Faye Ray and screenwriter Robert Riskin

("Meet John Doe," "Lost Horizon"), was nominated for an Emmy and received a Producers Guild of America Golden Laurel Award for her work as producer of "World War II: When Lions Roared" (1994), an honor she shared with Rintels and executive producer Ethel Winant.

Both Rintels and Riskin have been politically active in their profession, each serving terms as president of the Writers Guild of America.

Riskin also co-chairs the Southern California committee of Human Rights Watch and is co-founder of the Tibetan Aid Project.

Further information on the America and the Reshaping of the New World Order series is available on the series Web site, < http://acc.english.ucsb.edu/NWO>

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