Zev Braun
Chicago-born Braun has been a successful and honored filmmaker for over 40 years. In 1964, his production of GOLDSTEIN won the Prix de la Nouvelle Critique at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1974, his co-production of Maximilian Schell’s THE PEDESTRIAN won the Golden Globe Award as Best Foreign Film and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category. His production of THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE, starring Jodie Foster and Martin Sheen, was voted Best Horror Film by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. In 1986, Braun again teamed up with director Schell to co-produce MARLENE, which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature along with winning the New York Film Critics Award, The National Society of Film Critics Award and the National Board of Review Award. Braun’s all-consuming interest in filmmaking led him fresh from studying Humanities and Classic Arts at the University of Chicago to enter movies while still serving as President of Braun International, his family’s packaging firm. Some of Mr. Braun’s other productions include: ANGELA, starring Sophia Loren and John Huston; FREEDOM ROAD, starring Muhammad Ali and Kris Kristofferson; THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR. FU MANCHU, starring Peter Sellers; and WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN, starring Jill Clayburgh and Frederick Forrest.
The 1987-88 television season saw the company bring to the screen a two-hour movie-for-television, STILLWATCH, starring Lynda Carter and Angie Dickinson; a four-hour mini-series, MURDER ORDAINED, starring JoBeth Williams, Keith Carradine and Terry Kinney; a two-hour NBC movie, THE FATHER CLEMENTS STORY, starring Louis Gossett, Jr., Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Carroll O’Connor (winner of the Christopher Award and CEBA Award). TOUR OF DUTY, the highly acclaimed weekly prime-time series about the Vietnam War, also premiered in 1987 and ran for three successful seasons on CBS. Other television series from Mr. Braun include MURPHY’S LAW, starring George Segal, which ran on ABC and BAGDAD CAFÉ, starring Whoopie Goldberg and Jean Stapleton for CBS. In 1991, Braun produced A SEDUCTION IN TRAVIS COUNTY, a two-hour movie for CBS, starring Lesley Ann Warren, Peter Coyote and Jean Smart. Expanding into the cable marketplace, he produced SPLIT IMAGES, a two-hour movie based upon the best selling novel by Elmore Leonard and starring Gregory Harrison. In 1994, Braun produced the critically praised four-hour mini-series MENENDEZ: A KILLING IN BEVERLY HILLS for CBS starring Edward James Olmos and Beverly D’Angelo. Also that year at CBS was DOMINICK DUNNE’S 919 FIFTH AVENUE, a two-hour movie that starred Barry Bostwick, Michelle Phillips and John Rubinstein.
In 1996, ABDUCTED: A FATHER’S LOVE, a two-hour NBC movie starring Chris Noth, Peter MacNichol and Stepfanie Krammer, turned out to be one of the highest rated television movies for the year and was highly acclaimed, as well. LETHAL VOWS, starring John Ritter and Marg Helgenberger, aired on CBS in 1999, and also proved extremely successful.
Mr Braun then produced EDGES OF THE LORD, a feature film shot in Poland and starring Haley Joel Osment and Willem Dafoe, distributed by Miramax Films.
He executive produced the CBS 2005 May Sweeps entry, AMBER FREY: WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION starring Janel Moloney. Recently, Mr. Braun produced A GIRL LIKE ME: The Gwen Araujo Story for Lifetime Television starring Mercedes Ruehl and JD Pardo which won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Movie for Television and a Women's Image Network Award.
Mr. Braun is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, as well as the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. He serves on the Board of Trustees for The American Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR) and the Board of Directors for The Heart Touch Project. Zev Braun was also a founding member of the Board of Directors for GIRF (the Gastro-Intestinal Research Foundation) of the University of Chicago hospitals as well as the Chairman of the Board for the International Kidney Institute at UCLA. Braun also served as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Saban Vaccine Institute. He was awarded the City of Hope’s Golden Key for his work in connection with this organization.
Philip Krupp
Philip Krupp has been with Braun Entertainment Group, Inc. for over 20 years and currently serves as its Executive Vice President of Production. Mr. Krupp came to the organization and worked his way from the ground up, starting as Zev Braun’s assistant and rising through the ranks of development and production. He worked on such series as TOUR OF DUTY (CBS), MURPHY’S LAW (ABC) and BAGDAD CAFÉ (CBS). Early on, he served as Associate Producer on two Movies for Television, STILLWATCH (starring Lynda Carter) and THE FATHER CLEMENTS STORY (starring Louis Gossett, Jr. and Malcolm Jamal-Warner). He then produced the CBS 2-hour DOMINICK DUNNE’S 919 FIFTH AVENUE as well as the network’s 4-hour Mini Series, MENENDEZ: A KILLING IN BEVERLY HILLS (starring Edward James Olmos and Beverly D’Angelo). Krupp next served as Executive Producer on two addition television movies, NBC’s ABDUCTED: A FATHER’S LOVE (starring Chris Noth and Peter MacNichol) and CBS’ LETHAL VOWS (starring John Ritter and Marg Helgenberger). In the feature world, he produced the critically acclaimed indie, EDGES OF THE LORD, starring Haley Joel Osment and Willem Dafoe.
More recently, he executive produced the CBS 2005 May Sweeps entry, AMBER FREY: WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION starring Janel Moloney. And in June, 2006 he executive produced the award-winning Lifetime movie, A GIRL LIKE ME: THE GWEN ARAJUO STORY, starring Mercedes Ruehl and J. D Pardo.
Krupp received a Bachelor of Science degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
Michael Swidler
Michael Swidler is the latest addition to Braun Entertainment Group, Inc. Mr. Swidler has worked in many facets of the entertainment industry ranging from radio and film festivals in Indianapolis to web formatted television in Chicago. Mr. Swidler moved to Los Angeles in 2009 and has interned with Underground Films and Management and Verve Talent and Literary Agency. A year and half later, he joined Mr. Braun and Mr. Krupp at Braun Entertainment Group, Inc. as their development executive and assistant. Mr. Swidler received a bachelor degree in Telecommunications in the school of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Indiana at Bloomington.