Moviemakers and Scholars

Ira Sachs is a director and screenwriter based in New York. His second feature, Forty Shades of Blue, which Mr. Sachs directed and co-wrote, received the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. The film, starring Rip Torn and Dina Korzun, charts the relationship between a successful American record producer and his younger Russian wife. Mr. Sachs’s first feature, The Delta, distributed by Strand Releasing, screened at Sundance, Toronto, and Rotterdam. Mr. Sachs received the Emerging Talent Award at the 1997 LA Outfest and was awarded a 1999 Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. He also served as a fellow at the MacDowell Artist Colony in 2001 and has made several shorts, including Vaudeville and Lady (Sundance 1995).