Ilana also has an extensive background in producing and directing programs for children. She recently produced the Spanish version of Sesame Street’s Talk, Listen, Connect: Helping Military Families Cope with Deployment. For HBO Family, she conceived and co-produced My Favorite Book, a sixty-episode children’s series in which five- to seven-year-olds tell their own versions of classic picture books. The series includes interviews with over 500 children. Other credits include What’s Going On: Child Poverty in America for Showtime, profiling hunger and homelessness in the lives of Appalachian and urban children. For ABC-TV, she produced and directed two editions of ABC Children First, a magazine-style documentary series for parents. Her program, the Arts Advantage, about daring arts education programs around the country, received a Telly Award and an award from Media Rights, the online companion to the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
During two years on the staff of Thirteen/WNET’s City Arts (now called Egg: The Arts Show on PBS,) Ilana received three New York Emmys and many nominations. She produced the special Working Actors, co-produced the special Tales from the Book Trade, and developed stories for over one hundred documentary segments about the contemporary art world. Praying with Lior is her first independent film.
Click here to read an interview with Ilana Trachtman, Director of Praying with Lior
