Joel Berke

directing "An Unkindness of Ravens"

J. Nathaniel Berke is a Hollywood based screenwriter, producer and director for film and television. He has written screenplays for actors Sammo Hung (television’s Martial Law) and Hiep Thi Li (Oliver Stone's Heaven & Earth). In 1999, he was hired by Silver Dream Productions to pen the adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s Pavilion of Women, one of the very first China/Hollywood co-productions.^[1]

His directorial debut, An Unkindness of Ravens, premiered at the 2001 Manchester Film Festival and was purchased by Showtime and Universal Television U.K. His original screenplay was made into the award winning 2012 feature film The Locked Door (2012) (starring Chinese actress Huang Shengyi).

He is an accomplished underwater cameraman whose footage has been seen in films produced by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and Limulus Productions. He is currently producing and directing two documentary films: Waterman about freediver and writer Carlos Eyles and Piercing the Veil of Time: The Life and Art of Charles R. Knight. He has also written biopics on American writers Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck as well as British rock star and founder of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett.

In 2015 Los Angeles-Beijing Studios, Inc./ Yisang Media purchased two of his screenplays: Super Hero and Olympus (written with legendary science fiction novelist Alan Dean Foster). Both projects are in pre-production.^[2]

He graduated from the University of Central Florida's Creative Writing Department and Full Sail: School of Film, Art, Design, Music & Media Production. He has also studied writing and directing at the American Film Institute.

From 1992 - 1997 Berke was a film department instructor at the Daytona Beach and Melbourne, Florida campuses of Phillips Junior Colleges.

Credits

2000 Pavilion of Women - screenwriter
2001 An Unkindness of Ravens - screenwriter, director, editor
2003 Yellow Fever (commission for actress Hiep Thi Li
2008 Waterman (documentary) - writer, director, producer, editor
2010 Piercing the Veil of time (documentary) - writer, director, producer, editor, camera
2012 The Locked Door 2012 film (starring Huang Shengyi) - story, screenwriter
2015 Copycat Killers (TV series) - screenwriter
2015 The Goddess of Papercut (biopic of UNESCO Chinese Folk Artist Ku Shulan) - story

with Astronaut Buzz Aldrin

Current projects in development or pre-production

Encounter With Tiber (TV series based on novel by Buzz Aldrin)
Olympus (written with Alan Dean Foster)
Super Hero
Where the Road Ends (Jack Kerouac biopic)
Between the Tides (John Steinbeck/Ed Ricketts biopic)
The Beat Generation (TV series that chronicles the lives of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg & William S. Burroughs)
Faraway Laughter (Syd Barrett biopic)

References

External links

Joel Berke at the Internet Movie Database

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