David W. Leitner

Focus Forward: Short Films, Big Ideas is an award-winning series of 30 three-minute stories about innovators—people who are reshaping the world through act or invention—directed by the world's most celebrated documentary filmmakers.

This 54-minute documentary traces the writer James Salter's lifelong love affair with France, unforgettably expressed in his 1967 masterpiece, A Sport and a Pastime. Salter's own reflections on his writing and life offer rich insights for reader and writer alike.

The incredible story of the 1985 bar mitzvah of American Eric Strom in Cracow, the first bar mitzvah to be held in Poland in thirty-five years.

The Eternal Night is the story of three Cuban young men that were condemned for their beliefs and their creations. It is about the power of the imagination to transcend circumstance.

Francois the Tree Man is far from his wife and three small children in Quebec, selling Christmas trees and living in a van on the streets of New York City. He does it for them. But this is home, too. Like the hundreds of Christmas tree sellers who descend upon the city from Canada, New England and even Europe, Francois delivers the magic of the season over a grueling month in his adopted neighborhood. He's a star, a storyteller, a Santa Claus in a sap-stained coat, a confidant, a friend, and a father figure to the local characters who are his New York family. They also need him. TREE MAN is the story of Francois's journey, how he arrived here, what holds him, and the conflict that will cause him to leave. As one of Francois' long-time customers says: "This has nothing to do with the trees anymore."

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Jewish family history is reconstructed in this documentary about the traces of German terror in Eastern Europe during World War II where in which is about the attic of a peasant's home where her family's parents and relatives hid in squalor during the war for two frightening years hid, and then spent most of their lives afterwards trying to forget what happened. Yet their children somehow knew what their parents went through. Deciding to confront her personal demons, Goodstein went back to Poland with her aunt and a group of cousins to meet the woman who sheltered her family.