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| Founder Bari Pearlman Photo: Dino Panato |
BTG Productions is an independent production company specializing in quality documentaries for theatrical and television markets. It was founded in 1993 by Bari Pearlman, who collaborates regularly with the finest creative talent available. Her work has been supported with grants from NYSCA, The Jerome Foundation, The Hartley Film Foundation, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and the Lucius and Eva Eastman Foundation. She was recently granted a 2011 LMCC Swing Space Artist's Residency on Governors Island, and is a Yaddo Fellow. She was also a participant in the Sundance Producer's Conference in 2006.
Click here to view Bari's reel, or visit herpage.
Bari's award-winning feature documentary Daughters of Wisdom (2007), about the exceptional women of Kala Rongo Monastery in rural Tibet, was released theatrically in 2008, and is currently screening at museums and universities around the world. She also recently completed Nangchen Shorts, a collection of short films about life in rural Tibet - Ritual Objects [a triptych of three films (Prayer Wheel, Procession and Torma)], Water and Tsampa. In 2009, Bari directed the development trailer for The Strangest Town in Alaska for Cypress Films, about the people and peculiarities of Whittier, Alaska. She was also the Co-Producer/Co-Director (together with Phyllis Heller) of Mah-Jongg: The Tiles That Bind (1998), which was recently released in a 10th Anniversary Special Edition DVD. Bari has several films in development, including Looking for Lepke, or Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Sheep about the notorious gangster Lepke Buchalter who was her grandfather's first cousin.
Online, Bari regularly creates new episodes for her YouTube series What in the World..., begun during her Daughters of Wisdom tour. She is now creating an interactive web project A Period Piece, about women's relationships to menstruation. Her IFC Films interview with Philip Seymour Hoffman about his role in Adam Elliot's "Mary & Max" is streaming on traileraddict.com.
As a Producer, Bari is currently collaborating with Telling Image Films on Ezra Bookstein's second feature documentary SHOWTIME!. She also produced Lee Storey's award-winning feature documentary Smile 'Til It Hurts: The Up With People Story (2009) about that kitschy upbeat singing group, which is now preparing for its theatrical release. For television, she recently produced the "Hawkins" and "Darli" episodes of the docu-drama series The Fugitive Chronicles for A&E (2010), as well as (for @radical.media) Shots in the Dark (2001), a documentary about crime scene photography for Court TV/Channel 4, and VH1 Fan Club: ABBA (2002), Executive Produced by Joe Berlinger and directed by Bruce Sinofsky. She was also the Second Unit Director/Segment Producer of Jonathan Judge's Food for Thought: Good Taste In Art (2003).
In the fiction world, Bari recently served as Post Production Supervisor on CBS's Blue Bloods starring Tom Selleck and Donnie Walhberg. Her other fiction credits include Producer of Stephane Gouaze's short film The Necklace (2010), Segment Producer of Daniel Maidman's Nine Planets, and Assistant Director/Script Consultant on Cesq Gay's (Nico and Dani) first feature Hotel Room (1998).
As an Event Producer, Bari created high-profile special events for Delta Air Lines, The Merce Cunningham Dance Company, The NYU Downtown Hospital Debutante Cotillion and Christmas Ball, and the CUNY Graduate Center. She served as the Coordinator of the 1999 Classically Independent Film Festival Tour, Managing Director of the 1999 IFP American Independents in Berlin Program, Hospitality Director of the 1996 and 1997 Hamptons International Film Festival, Managing Director of the 1997 New York Women's Film Festival, and the Curator/Programmer of the 1997 Moonworks Short Film Program. She was a Juror for the 2002 Columbia University Student Film Awards, Juror for the 2000, 2001 and 2002 FilmFest New Haven and the 2000 Student Academy Awards.
Bari was a Contributing Editor to Filmmaker Magazine for 12 years, and has been an editorial consultant for Scenario, Silicon Alley Reporter and IFC/Rant magazines, and the Indiewire and IFP Websites. She has also translated the fiction of Swedish author Jonas Gardell. A 1987 graduate of SUNY Binghamton, Bari earned a Master's degree in Literature from Indiana University in 1994.
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