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Laurel Chiten has been an independent filmmaker for over twenty years.
Laurel Chiten's most recent film is Twisted,
a documentary about people with the neurological
disorder, dystonia was broadcast on PBS's series Independent
Lens January 30th 2007. Twisted was honored with Outstanding Achievement in a Documentary film from the Mass Access Awards.
Chiten also produced and directed Touched (2003)
a film about people who think they have been abducted by aliens, and the
Harvard psychiatrist who believed them.
Touched won Best Documentary at its Canadian premiere at the Female Eye
Film Festival (FeFF) in Toronto on November 22, 2003. Touched also won Best
Documentary of 2003 in the "Abductee or Contactee" category at
a long-running UFO convention.
She also made The Jew in the Lotus (1999) inspired by Rodger Kamenetz's
best-selling book, focusing on the author's particular odyssey of suffering
and the role of spirituality as a universal theme. The
Jew in the Lotus has screened around the world and was broadcast nationwide on the PBS
program Independent Lens. It has been honored with Most Outstanding
Personal Vision from the New England Film and Video festival. The
Jew in the Lotus is distributed by New
Day Films.
In 1994 she completed Twitch and Shout, a documentary about people living
with Tourette Syndrome, which was nationally broadcast in July 1995 as part
of the highly-acclaimed PBS series, P.O.V. Twitch and Shout was nominated
for a national Emmy, and has received numerous other awards. Twitch
and Shout continues to receive wide educational distribution through New Day Films.
Chiten was Producer/Director/Co-Writer of Two in
Twenty, a five episode
satirical soap opera series, completed in 1988. Two
in Twenty, which has
become a cult classic, screened nationally and internationally at film and
video festivals and is being distributed in home video markets through Wolfe
Video.
Chiten produced a 10 part series with Robin Casarjian based on her book
Houses of Healing, a self study guide utilized in prisons nationwide.
Chiten was an artist in resident at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center
sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. She received a residency scholarship
at Yaddo and the MacDowell Artist Colony. Chiten was honored with The Artist
's Fellowship for creativity in video production from the Massachusetts Council
for the Arts and Humanities in 1987.
Chiten is also a certified American Sign Language interpreter.
She was also a teacher at the Boston Film and Video Foundation in Boston
and at the Maine Photographic Workshops. She is a public speaker, and has
been around the globe speaking with her films.
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