James Sweetbaum

Biography

James Sweetbaum is a Swiss Producer-Director, currently developing the feature film Cross the Great Water, with Jodi Smith, managing director of AgentSmith Ltd, and promoting On Divan (2009), a Moroccan language film he directed and co-produced with Latefa El Berki. In 2007 he founded Surrogate Productions LLC, a US based production company dedicated to helping emerging film and video artists to make ambitious features and shorts.

He studied Marketing and Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Hitotsubashi University, Japan and holds a Masters in Fine Arts from the Film and Video Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has Bachelor degrees from the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (BFA 2000) and the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies department of the University of Pennsylvania (1996). He is a Fulbright Fellow, having received a 2006 award for Film-making in Morocco, and was selected for the 2007-2008 founding year of the LUX Associate Artist Program at LUX, London. In 2008 he was awarded a Roberto Cimetta Travel Grant promoting artist mobility in the Mediterranean Region.

His film and video work has been screened internationally and his feature length credits include writer and assistant director on the award winning SNRT (Morocco) production of ‘Why O’Sea’ (Director: Hakim Belabbes, 2006 Bronze Muhr Award, Dubai International Film Festival). He has taught Media Literacy at Street Level Youth Media, Chicago and was technical and final-cut pro instructor on the Marrakech Tribeca Film Maker Exchange Program at the Marrakech and Tribeca Film Festivals (2005 and 2006 respectively).

He was invited to be a member of the selection committee for the Fulbright UK Film Council Award 2009-10, and is a member of The Swiss Filmmakers Association (ARF/FDS), New Producers Alliance (UK), The Artskool Network (Paris) and The Fulbright Arts Task Force, Washington D.C.