GEORGE PAUL CSICSERY has directed 28 films—shorts, performance films and documentaries. His films on historical, ethnographic, and cultural subjects, include works on pirates, prostitutes, romance novel writers, policemen, scouts, and Transylvanian folk musicians. Among these are the feature length documentaries Where the Heart Roams (1987), about romance writers and their fans, and Hungry for Monsters (2003), about a Pennsylvania case of false accusation of incest and child molestation that premiered at the Human Rights section of the Locarno International Film Festival in 2004.
In 1988 Csicsery’s career took a dramatic turn when he began work on a biographical film about Paul Erdös. N is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdös led to more projects on mathematical subjects. Invitation to Discover, about MSRI, and porridge pulleys and Pi, about Hendrik Lenstra and Vaughan Jones, were both completed in 2003. The Right Spin (2005), the story of astronaut Michael Foale’s role in saving the Mir space station in 1997, was made for Math Awareness Month. _ Julia Robinson and Hilbert’s Tenth Problem_, a one-hour biographical documentary, premiered in January 2008 at the JMM. Hard Problems: The Road to the World’s Toughest Math Contest also premiered there in January 2008. The feature documentary about American students at the 2006 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) was produced with the Mathematical Association of America.
His screenplay, Alderman’s Story, a period epic set during King Philip’s War in New England in 1675, was awarded first prize at the Rhode Island International Film Festival Screenplay Competition in 2005. His articles, reviews and interviews have appeared in Salon.com, Amerasia Journal, Asia Times, Film Quarterly, California Magazine, Savvy, The San Jose Mercury-News, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Oakland Tribune, The Japan Times, and many other publications. He has taught Cinema at Film Arts Foundation, San Francisco State University and UC Davis.
Csicsery’s articles, reviews, and interviews have appeared in numerous newspapers and publications, and have been reprinted in several anthologies. He has taught cinema at San Francisco State University and at UC Davis, and film editing at Film Arts Foundation. He is owner and head of production at Zala Films in Oakland, California.
Contact:
:www.zalafilms.com
