Hilla Medalia: Returns To Sundance and Brings Dancing Home to Windrider
When Hilla Medalia, the award winning, Peabody winning documentarian heard CENSORED VOICES was accepted to Sundance 2015, it truly felt like she was coming home. As a student filmmaker ten years ago from Southern Illinois University, Hilla accepted an invitation from Windrider Forum to bring her emotionally charged DAUGHTERS OF ABRAHAM to WR Park City, after co-founders John and Ed Priddy saw it the Angelus Student Film Festival where it had won Outstanding Documentary.
“For me, much of my career happened as a result of my student film winning Angelus and through Windrider Forum. Windrider brought me to Sundance where I made invaluable contacts, got incredible visibility and this experience resulted in the Priddys introducing my film to HBO.” From there, the newly edited and much acclaimed TO DIE IN JERUSALEM and subsequent documentaries went on to garner a slew of nominations and awards, including the prestigious Peabody Award, Emmy nominations, Paris Human Rights Film Festival Jury Award, and of course, Sundance Film Festival selections.
Hilla is especially enthusiastic to bring the award-winning DANCING IN JAFFA to Windrider Forum this year. An engaging and emotional story that New York Times called “irresistible to behold,” DANCING IN JAFFA received accolades from several festivals, including Tribeca, the Sydney Film Festival and the Israel Film Festival. The much lauded documentary relates the story of veteran dancer Pierre Dulaine, four-time ballroom dancing champion who takes his program “Dancing Classrooms” back to his birth city of Jaffa. Over a ten-week period, Pierre teaches Jewish and Palestinian children to dance and compete together. DANCING IN JAFFA is both emotionally charged and challenging — can something as simple as dance make strides where there is complexity in religious identity, segregation and racial prejudice?
Hilla has traveled the globe with DANCING IN JAFFA, addressing audiences of varied cultures and backgrounds, including the Arab community. “Every encounter with an audience is always very interesting,” said Hilla. And now during WR 2015, Hilla will have the opportunity to share this acclaimed gem with the WR community.
Hilla is now an acclaimed repeat Sundance filmmaker, a prestigious designation for any documentarian. “The life of a film is important, Hilla says, “and it is a privilege and honor to be accepted at Sundance because as an independent filmmaker, this is the place to be.” Last year, Hilla’s Sundance selected film WEB JUNKIE explored the emotional voyage that examines internet addiction and its affects on families and interpersonal relationships in Chinese society. This year, CENSORED VOICES will receive its world premiere at Sundance 2015. CENSORED VOICES deals with a group of young writers one month after Israel’s decisive victory in the Six-Day War, after they recorded soldiers talking about the high cost of their “triumph”. The recordings were censored by the army and deleted from the historical record. This documentary reveals these voices for the first time. In anticipation for what will surely be a sure-fire lauded Sundance offering, WR Executive Director Will Stoller Lee has already purchased dozens of tickets for the WR community to attend and support their fellow WR filmmaker.
Hilla relates that as she develops future projects, she will always pursue socially important issues. Currently, she is juggling a beautiful family that includes daughter Emmanulle, and now seeks and has found a balance which gives her more energy and happiness. “I definitely look at things differently now,” she adds.
“The contacts I made, back in 2004, I still have today,” Hilla said. Hilla added that whenever she travels the globe, she is inevitably met by supporters from Angelus or Windrider Forum that she met along her journey. They have become friends, invaluable resources and collaborators. “But that first trip was inspirational and unforgettable. It’s not coming back to a film festival with Windrider, it’s coming back to my community, a family.”