Finding Babel

Isaac Babel's writings are subversive masterpieces, challenging the ideology of the early Soviet Union, and resulting in his arrest and execution in 1940. Hoping to better understand Babel's powerful artistic method and elusive persona, Andrei Malaev-Babel, his grandson, journeys through Ukraine, France and Russia. He confronts lingering traces of a turbulent history that echo in Babel’s writing and in the conflicts and climate of today’s Ukraine and Russia.

Duration: 88
Production year: 2015
Country: Canada, United States of America, France, United Kingdom, Ukraine

David Novack

David Novack is the director, and a writer/producer of Finding Babel. Prior to his work with Finding Babel, he wrote, produced and directed the film Burning the Future: Coal in America, which won the prestigious IDA Pare Lorentz Award and the British Clarion Award, both for social documentary filmmaking.

Mr. Novack produced Kimjongilia, featuring the testimony of N. Korean refugees, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and won the 2010 human rights documentary award from the One World Brussels Film Fest of the Human Rights and Democracy Network. In audio, Mr. Novack has enjoyed a successful career as a re-recording mixer/sound designer, including sound mixing for Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine, and recently designing a major new opera by Roger Waters, Ça Ira.

Mr. Novack holds an engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and a degree in music from Berklee College of Music. In additional to making films, Mr. Novack is a Professor of Film at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design where he enjoys mentoring a new generation of filmmakers.

Original title: Finding Babel

David Novack

Credits