American Magic

Gil Kofman was born in Nigeria and raised in Kenya, Israel, and NYC. He studied physics at Cornell before attending NYU Graduate Film School, and later receiving an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama. His play AMERICAN MAGIC, a dark political satire, was produced in NY, LA, and London with music by Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth and Richard Foreman playing the part of the President. It was later published by Broadway Play Publishing along with two other plays, INTERVIEW and PHARMACOPEIA. His play, ENTREVISTA 187, won an LA Dramalogue Award and was later produced at the Dallas Theater Center. Kofman has also published short fiction in Gordon Lish's The Quarterly and helped produce, edit and shoot the Sundance (2002) award-winning documentary, Derrida. His film, The Memory Thief, which he wrote and directed, won the Feature Award at the Edmonton Int'l Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at the Red Rock Film Festival. The New York Times called it "morally audacious and intriguingly original." In 2008 he co-edited and acted in You Won't Miss Me (Sundance 2009) which won a Gotham Award and played at various festivals throughout the world including SXSW. In 2010 he directed and edited a feature thriller in mainland China, called Case Sensitive, which was developed at the Sundance Producer's Lab and got a wide release in China June 2011.