Tom Weidlinger is a writer and filmmaker who has been writing, directing and producing documentaries for 35 years. He began work on the manuscript and documentary, The Restless Hungarian, in late 2013.
His earlier work deals with a wide range of subjects, from the emotional development of boys to humanitarian aid in the Congo. Social justice is a common theme. He made six full-length documentaries for public television, commissioned by the Lillian Lincoln Foundation, during the decade ending in 2010. One of these, Jim Thorpe, The World’s Greatest Athlete, received over 4000 telecasts from public television stations. It is a film about a man who used his amazing physical prowess to affirm his American Indian identity in the face of unrelenting efforts to eradicate his culture.
In the 1990s Weidlinger was awarded one of the single largest production grants provided by the Independent Television Service (ITVS). The grant funded a four-hour series, Making Peace, about grass-roots activists helping to heal conditions that create violence. During the early years of the Internet, the Making Peace Action Campaign became a model for effective, media-related social activism.
In 1989, inspired by the writings of Czech dissident-turned-president Vaclav Havel, Weidlinger embarked on a multi-year project to chronicle the evolution of Czechoslovak society after the fall of communism. He moved to Prague to produce After the Velvet Revolution, which traces the lives of young Czechs and Slovaks as they adjusted to life in a new democracy. The film was shot over a period of four years, ending in 1993 with the partition of Czechoslovakia.
In 1987 he founded Moira Productions and made the transition from working as a director for hire to independent filmmaker, developing and raising funding for Moira’s own films. He produced his first two archival documentaries for the PBS flagship series The American Experience. The Great San Francisco Earthquake premiered the first season.
Twenty-one of his films have been broadcast on public television. Many have won festival and industry awards and all remain in distribution. For detailed information, including trailers, please visit http://moiraproductions.com/.