Robert A. Rosenstone is the author of the best-selling Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed, the basis for the Academy Award–winning film Reds. He is also an expert on historical film and lectures world wide on the subject. He has written Crusade of the Left: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War; Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Meiji Japan; Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History; and The Man Who Swam into History, a family memoir. Rosenstone is a professor of history at the California Institute of Technology.

“A fresh and fascinating debut that manages both to evoke the topsy-turvy atmosphere of Stalinist Russia and to put together a pretty fair replica of Babel’s prose.”

—Kirkus

“[H]ow gracefully Rosenstone’s novel ropes a reader in, salting the story with just enough flashbacks to enthrall Babel cognoscenti and the Babel ignorami alike. It’s an astonishingly confident first novel from a historian with a whole new career ahead of him.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“In an impressive effort of literary boldness, historian Robert A. Rosenstone fills in some of the blanks in Babel’s life and work in a first novel, King of Odessa. With irreverent humor, textured descriptions and sensitive attention to detail, Rosenstone imaginatively constructs Babel’s world.”

–The Jewish Week

Hailed by the international press the multi-award winning director-writer Vladimir Alenikov started his artistic career as an author, playwright, scholar, and film director in the Soviet era of communism. All creative expression was in the control of the state. Fascinated by the film medium, Alenikov started making films as an underground filmmaker having been denied entrance to the official film schools of Russia because of his Jewish heritage. He made numerous films, many of them winning awards in international festivals.

His first widespread success was a series of children’s films featuring the characters of “Petrov and Vasechkin”, who became Russian national treasures. In 1990, Alenikov completed “The Drayman and the King”, a film based on the work of Isaac Babel, the biggest Russian musical in the vein of “Fiddler on the Roof”. The film garnered several prizes in Russia and was an official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival and the American Film Institute (AFI) Festival in Los Angeles, among others.

When Alenikov returned to Russia in 1991, he found himself in the midst of the coup attempt of August 17, 1991 to end the democratic movement of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Taking to the streets in protest and resisting the coup with a video camera alongside tanks, barricades, and the people of the streets of Moscow, Alenikov captured the resistance to the coup in his documentary “The Awakening”, which was completed in 1991, and distributed internationally.

Alenikov’s “Time of Darkness” (aka “The Clearing”), starring George Segal, was shown at the number of international film festivals, and was sold all over the world. Alenikov has continued his career of artistic innovation with major films (including musicals and horror films), which have been shown at prestigious international film festivals. “The Red One: Triumph” was an official selection at the Toronto Film Festival and Lisbon Film Festivals in 2000 (among others), and “Princess’ War” was shown at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1999 (among others).

His most recent directorial work is “The Gun (from 6 to 7:30 pm)” produced by Front Line Films (2003). It is an innovative feature film, shot in only 15 scenes, in real-time, without any cuts. “The Gun” was official selection for World Competition at the Montreal World Film Festival (the only American entry), Quebec International Film Festival, Belgrade International Film Festival of the Auteurs Films ( Diploma for an Outstanding Film), Tiburon Int. Film Fest., Honolulu Int. Film Fest., Moscow Int. Film Fest., Saint-Petersburg Festival of Festivals and others.

Alenikov currently resides in Los Angeles, California where he continues to make significant contributions to American films. In addition to writing, directing, and producing his films, he also serves as cultural advisor to the Mikhail Gorbachev Foundation and teaches film directing at the University of California Los Angeles.

Lawrence Pressman’s many television credits include roles on HBO’s The Late Shift; four years as “Dr. Canfield” in Steven Bochco’s Doogie Howser, M.D.; Winds of War; Rich Man, Poor Man; Wings of Eagles; Blind Ambition; and The Gathering. He has also guest starred on numerous series, most recently Judging Amy, Crossing Jordan, The Practice, Gilmore Girls, The Guardian, and Without A Trace. His film credits include roles in American Wedding, American Pie, Dr. Doolittle, My Giant, Mighty Joe Young, Hanoi Hilton, 9 to 5 and Man in the Glass Booth with Maximilian Schell. Mr. Pressman made his Broadway debut in Never Live Over a Pretzel Factory (Theatre World Award); he co-starred with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Play It Again, Sam. He is the recipient of Drama-Logue Awards for Betrayal and Bodies. He is a member of the Antæus Company and a founding member of The Matrix Theatre Company, where he most recently appeared as “Goldberg” in The Birthday Party.