Jay Rosenblatt

The death of my seven-year-old brother when I was nine remains a painful and haunting memory. My parents did not know how to cope with the loss of their child and the entire family experienced indescribable pain. Phantom Limb uses this personal story as a point of departure. Whether it is a loss through death or divorce, the stages of grieving are the same. Individuals often go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, ultimately, some kind of acceptance, in order to heal. The film is loosely structured according to these stages. Interspersed throughout this poetic documentary are interviews with a cemetery owner, a phantom limb patient and an author of a book about evidence for life after death. Phantom Limb reminds viewers that while grief is painful and isolating, it is a reminder to each of us that life is impermanent. - Jay Rosenblatt

Just moments before his third wedding, Zahedi relates with utter sincerity and astonishing candor his obsession with prostitutes. He retraces his romantic and sexual history, including his ideological commitment to open relationships, that led to two disastrous marriages and several very pissed off ex-girlfriends.

Caveh is commissioned by Fandor to film awkward celebrity encounters at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. This is a documentary about his time at the festival filming those encounters.

The trials and tribulations of truly independent filmmaking and the quest for the perfect shot.

Period Piece is a 30 min. documentary about menarche--a girl's first menstrual period--which is a fundamental experience in every woman's life, yet one that is rarely celebrated. Women of different ages (8-84) and multi-cultural backgrounds tell their menarchal stories.

Independent Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi is trying to make a television show. He persuades BRIC TV, a Brooklyn non-profit Arts organization, to finance a television show whose premise is that every episode will be about the making of the previous episode. In the process of creating the show, everything can-and does-go wrong. The cast, a who's who of Brooklyn's independent filmmaking community, includes Alex Karpovsky, Eleonore Hendricks, Dustin Defa, and Onur Tukel.

A mind-boggling "coincidence" leads the filmmaker to track down his fifth grade class – and fifth grade teacher – to examine their memory of and complicity in a bullying incident fifty years ago.

Shot 25 years ago, this intimate, disarming and emotionally raw documentary offers a privileged window into a couple (filmmakers Jay Rosenblatt and Stephanie Rapp) as they navigate issues that will impact their lives forever.


Faith and fear. Duck and cover. One response to 9/11.
 Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival


Take a chance. Don't do it. This is America. Do it.

This emotionally raw and intimate documentary, shot 25 years ago, follows a couple - the filmmakers – in their complicated journey towards bringing a new life into the world. In today's landscape of reproductive rights, this story takes on a new meaning and offers a rare view into this moment in their lives.

A father takes us through one year of trying to teach a preschooler how to make a film.

On January 1st, 1999, Caveh Zahedi started a one-year video diary. The idea was to shoot one minute each day. This is the result.

For 17 years, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt filmed his daughter Ella on her birthday in the same spot, asking her the same questions. In just 29 minutes, we watch her grow from a toddler to a young woman with all the beautiful and sometimes awkward stages in between. Each phase is captured fleetingly but makes an indelible mark. Her responses to her father’s questions are just a backdrop for a deeper story of parental love, acceptance, and ultimately, independence.

Three women are in enclosed psychological zones that function as both refuge and jail.

A film about fear and anxiety. 
Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival



No description available.

Human Remains is a haunting documentary which illustrates the banality of evil by creating intimate portraits of five of the 20th century's most reviled dictators. The film unveils the personal lives of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco and Mao Tse Tung. We learn the private and mundane details of their everyday lives -- their favorite foods, films, habits and sexual preferences. There is no mention of their public lives or of their place in history. The intentional omission of the horrors for which these men were responsible hovers over the film.

An old man reflects on his entire life. How quickly it all goes by.

A 'dog-u-mentary' about birth, loss and near death. The film follows three adults and a dog named Lola through Lola's pregnancy, the birth of her puppies, and the loss of each puppy to their new owners. Often funny and ultimately sad, the piece explores our love and attachments to dogs and our projections onto animals.