Dvir Productions is a Pennsylvania-based film production company that focuses on visual non-fiction storytelling. It is owned and run by award-winning filmmaker and Penn State assistant professor Boaz Dvir. Dvir creates innovative ways to meet young people where they are. He tells the stories of ordinary people who, under extraordinary circumstances, transform into trailblazers and game changers.
For instance, his PBS film, A Wing and a Prayer, recounts a World War II flight engineer’s transformation into the leader of a secret operation to save newborn Israel. Dvir, who is writing a book for Rowman & Littlefield about this 1948 operation, is in post-production on Cojot: A Holocaust Survivor Takes History Into His Own Hands, which tells the story of a French banker who set out to kill former N**i officer Klaus Barbie and ended up playing a pivotal role in Israel’s 1976 Operation Entebbe; and Discovering Gloria, about an inner-city schoolteacher who becomes a highly effective innovator and national model. His critically acclaimed films also include Jessie’s Dad, which captures an uneducated truck driver’s transformation into a national child-protection activist. Lifetime and Investigation Discovery have incorporated footage from Dvir’s documentaries into their programs. His films have received coverage by such media as the Huffington Post, Haaretz, MSNBC, the New York Post, The Miami Herald, Stars and Stripes, the Las Vegas Sun, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Florida magazine. For instance, A Wing and a Prayer won Best Documentary in the 2016 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. Dvir has also taught journalism and documentary filmmaking at the University of Florida. He has written for many publications, including New York’s Newsday, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Miami Herald, the Tampa Bay Times, the Jerusalem Post, The Satirist, Scripps Howard’s Treasure Coast Newspapers, the Times of Israel and Explore. Dvir served as editor of the Jacksonville Business Journal and managing editor of the South Florida Business Journal, which are part of the Newhouse-owned American City Business Journals. For several years, he appeared on “Week in Review” and wrote commentaries for WJCT, Jacksonville’s NPR/PBS station. Dvir created a documentary short about PALS, which helped the nonprofit – which aids troubled teens – receive an official nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants. Dvir received a Lilly Endowment grant from the Religion News Service to research spiritual aspects of the Holocaust. He served as an officer and a military journalist in the Israel Defense Forces, where he gathered vital information during 1991 Gulf War, providing material to foreign correspondents, James Baker’s office and then Israeli spokesman and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Generating new knowledge through primary research, Boaz engages young people through contemporary visual storytelling, animation, video installations, special screenings, interactive programs, course modules and online content, among other creative means.
