Glenn Silber, Director/Producer

Glenn Silber has been a documentary director and producer for more than 30 years, both as an independent and a network television news magazine producer. His work has been nominated for two Academy Awards and he has won the George Polk Award (“The Great American Bailout”), an Emmy, a WGA Award and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. He is now a partner and co-founder of Catalyst Media Productions, a media production and consulting firm, since 2007.

Silber began his filmmaking career as a college student at the University of Wisconsin in the 1970s. In 1978, he completed his first feature documentary, “An American Ism: Joe McCarthy,” which traced the rise to power of Sen. Joseph McCarthy through interviews with people who knew him from his humble beginnings in rural Wisconsin to his prominence as America’s best known post-war “anti-Communist” demagogue. The film aired on PBS and won a Columbia DuPont Silver Baton Award.

While producing “An American Ism,” Silber was also working on a feature-length documentary about the anti-Vietnam War movement on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison after discovering an archive of long forgotten local TV news film. “The War at Home,” was released in 1979 and was nominated for an Oscar as Best Feature Documentary.

Silber’s next film, “El Salvador: Another Vietnam,” the first American documentary on the crisis in that country, was also nominated for an Academy Award as Best Feature Documentary after it was released in 1981. Charting the course of the Salvadoran civil war and military dictatorships during the late ‘70s leading up to the U.S. intervention in the conflict, the film features interviews with military brass and political leaders, rebels, and Salvadoran citizens caught between them.

After graduating from the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies and receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, Silber worked as a staff producer for various prime time TV newsmagazines from 1987 to 2007, first for CBS (1987-1994) and later for ABC (1994-2007). While at CBS, he specialized in social issue investigations, producing the Emmy Award-winning “Children of the Homeless” as well as segments on racial bias in southern California law enforcement, Los Angeles gangs, Hollywood plagiarism, the Savings and Loan Bailout and a hidden-camera investigation into telemarketing charity fraud, among many others.

At ABC News 20/20, Silber’s stories ranged from producing profiles with Barbara Walters (including the first post-2000 interview with Al Gore) to investigative pieces with John Miller regarding the terrorist movements in New Jersey before 9/11, to producing the first prime-time interview with an Abu Ghraib prison guard. Silber also co-produced the one-hour re-examination of the Matthew Shepard homicide for 20/20 which received a Writers Guild of America Award in 2005.


Claudia Vianello, Co-Producer

Claudia Vianello has more than 30 years of producing, consulting and creative development experience across the complete spectrum of production, from documentaries, industrials and corporate media, to independent features. She is currently a partner with Glenn Silber of Catalyst Media Productions, a media production and consulting firm, since 2007.

A graduate of the Center for Advanced Film Studies, American Film Institute, Los Angeles, Ms. Vianello was a story analyst for IPC (Jane Fonda) Films, Marble Arch Productions, Kings Road, Embassy Pictures, and the Phil Gersh Agency in Los Angeles before she went into production. During the ‘80’s she worked in development for television and assisted producers on numerous “Movies of the Week” for Viacom Productions and Aaron Spelling Productions. She also began working on documentaries, including “The Seeds of Liberty” and “El Salvador: Another Vietnam” as Associate Producer and Writer.

In 1982 she was Co-Producer of “Atomic Artist”, a 30 minute documentary about sculptor Tony Price and his “Atomic Art” for the Arts and Entertainment Channel. “Atomic Artist” won a Bronze Award and First Place award at the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Peter Stuyvesant Humanitarian Award at the Melbourne, Australia International Film Festival in 1983. In 1985 she co-produced and directed “Troupers”, an independent feature documentary about the San Francisco Mime Troupe that won a Bronze Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival.

As a communications consultant, Ms. Vianello has produced over 35 corporate and organizational videos, including 4 Telly awards and 4 awards from the International Television and Video Association and managed an award-winning team of designers, writers, video directors, and production people. She partnered with clients in marketing, public affairs, and communications to design and implement multi-media campaigns to support strategic initiatives. “One Prudential Exchange” was a series of corporate videos and promos designed to educate employees regarding new organizational strategies and initiatives that was distributed to 60,000 employees. The series won both Silver and Bronze Telly Awards.

In 1998 she developed and co-produced an independent dramatic feature film entitled “Row Your Boat” starring Jon Bon Jovi, Bai Ling, and Jill Hennessy that was the winner of the Audience Choice Award at the Stoneybrook Film Festival.

Since 2004 she has concentrated on communications consulting and documentary production. In 2007 she co-produced “Leave No Soldier”, a feature documentary about how two generations of Vietnam and Iraq war veterans transform the trauma of war into social action.