Erik Friedl

An American raised in Switzerland, Genesis Award-winner Erik Friedl is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker whose documentaries, shorts and educational films have won over thirty major festival awards.

Subjects have ranged from travel adventure in the Comoro Islands to classic Chinese kite making ("Flights of Fancy" featuring the legendary Tyrus Wong) to award-winning corporate films for aerospace to a series of humane-education films ("Friend for Life", "The Power of Compassion", "Patterns of Abuse: Exploding the Cycle", "Kiss the Animals Goodbye", "Una Ultima Pelea: Exponiendo la Vergüenza") that have aired on PBS and continue to be widely used in the classroom. The latter are distributed by Pyramid Media, Santa Monica: pyramidmedia.

Friedl also collaborated as writer on the feature epic, "Western Odyssey", with legendary scripter Luciano Vincenzoni ("The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", "La Grande Guerra", "Malena"). "Western Odyssey" is now in development as a four-hour miniseries.

Film awards include five CINE Golden Eagles, the Silver Hugo from Chicago Int'l Film Festival, the Gold Apple Award from the Nat'l Education Film Festival, First Place Awards at San Francisco Int'l Film Festival and Birmingham Int'l Educational Film Festival, two Gold Awards at the Houston Int'l Film Festival, Best in Show at HeSCA Film Festival (Health Sciences Media) and the Genesis Award (HSUS).