Absolutely Anna

Absolutely Anna
A Feature Documentary
Anna Berger has been a working actor on Broadway, television and in films for 60 years. She has turned the act of stealing a scene into an art in episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, Law and Order and The Sopranos and in movies like The Taking of Pelham, One Two Three, Ghost World and Crimes and Misdemeanors, where, as Aunt May, she single-handedly turned a great Woody Allen film into one of his best.
But before she even got to Hollywood, she spent over 30 years on the Broadway stage and in tours with legends like Mae West and John Garfield as well as in the earliest days of live television.
Four years ago she embarked upon turning her life experience into a show called Absolutely Anna. The result is a totally astonishing one-woman tour-de-force of memories and emotions, from the depression through the war and right on through the battle of being taken seriously as a female actor; from creative highs to depressing lows; from deep pain to absolute joy; a veritable guided tour through a bygone time.
Since its completion, she has been traveling the country, with her husband Bob as technical director (or, as she likes to say, "on the boom box"), delighting and mesmerizing audiences with stories of growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, seeing her first boyfriend (Walter Matthau) off to war and transcending her less than actorly looks with a true love of performing and turning it into a life long career filled with larger than life characters and moving experiences, and still making time to be a dedicated wife and mother.
And now, as Anna Berger finally puts her story on film, we, the enthralled, get to see how this grand lady can have such an intense connection to the past and yet still be going strong in the present. A survivor’s tale of the first order.

The Production Team

Joanna Sanchez (Executive Producer)
Joanna is a veteran film and television actress who has also served as a casting director and producer. She is the daughter of Anna Berger and Bob Malatsky.
Charles Hobson (Producer/Consultant)

Executive Producer of Vanguard Documentaries, premieres “Harlem in Montmarte,” this August for PBS’s “Great Performances.” MOMA interviews him about his acclaimed four-decade film career June 2, in “Conversations Among Friends.” His many films include “Porgy and Bess: An American Voice” (PBS), “Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant,” “Jump Street: The History of Black Music,” and “Producer, Like It Is. (ABC-TV) ” His awards include an Emmy, Fulbright (Germany), The Japan Prize (Special Citation), and CINE “Golden Eagle.” Hobson has taught at SUNY, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Vassar, and lectured at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. He will be Artist in Residence this summer at Art Workshop International, Assai, Italy.

Dan Schneider, Esq. (Co-Producer/General Counsel)
Dan Schneider is a partner in the Manhattan law firm of Schneider, Pfahl & Rahme, LLP. He has been practicing entertainment, corporate, new media, intellectual property (copyrights and trademarks) and real property law for more than 27 years in Manhattan and Woodstock, N.Y. A graduate of Vassar College (AB, 1979, Evans Fellow in Law) and Emory Law School (JD, 1982, Emory Scholar), he is admitted to the New York and Georgia bars, as well as to the U.S. District Court (Southern District, N.Y.). Mr. Schneider has been AV-rated by Martindale Hubbell (www.schneiderpfahl.com). A member of numerous non-profit Boards, including The America The Beautiful Fund, The Giulio Gari Foundation, The Florence Belsky Charitable Foundation and the Hudson Valley Technology and Commerce, Dan is the founder of First Mondays (www.firstmondays.com), a quarterly networking group, first founded in 2002 to help New Yorkers help themselves during difficult times. Dan’s successful non-profit experiences include being Project Manager for a joint NEA Arts in Education Grant to the Woodstock Day School and Woodstock Youth Theatre, which resulted in the creation of three (3) new collaborative works which were publicly performed in Ulster County, New York. He is currently serving as Executive Director of a new non-profit: www.icanstilldothat.org, whose mission is to help put American back to work. The Foundation hopes to make First Mondays a national, monthly event, and is creating mutual mentor programs such as: www.womenmentorwomen.org. Dan was a co-founder of www.bigshoesnyc.com and has produced several films, including short documentaries, commercials, music videos and features.

Rebecca Allen ( Co-Producer, Editor )
Rebecca has worked as a video engineer since 1987. She started in post-production editorial at Paramount Pictures at the age of 19 years old and joined the Editors Guild. Years later she went on to production video and sound providing video playback and video assist on the sets of Warner Brothers, Universal, Sony and many other independent productions in Hollywood, California. In 2008 Rebecca began moonlighting as a camera assistant on feature films and television reality shows, working with the Red HD movie camera. She has her own company Rebel Video Production, and acquired her own 1080i HD camera, and Final Cut editing software, building her business in documentary style productions. The love of shooting on location, and the creative process of putting it together in the editing room is a passion she shares with the network of directors and producers Rebecca has available to her for future projects on the west coast.

Absolutely Anna

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The Production Team