Einhorn, Lena 1954-

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Einhorn, Lena 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born 1954. Education: M.D., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Sweden.

CAREER:

Filmmaker and writer. Producer, director, and writer of medical and science documentaries, educational programs, and medical news programs for Lifetime Television, Medical News Network, and the Medical Broadcasting Company, 1989-1993.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Swedish Academy of Verbovisual Information Award, 1998, and Prix Europa for Television Programme of the Year, 1999, both for "Stateless, Arrogant, and Lunatic"; Prix Aventure et Découverte, Image & Science Festival, 2002, for From the Shadows of the Past; August Prize, National Book Award of Sweden, 2005, for the nonfiction book Ninas resa. Swedish National Film Awards for best film and best script, 2005, Gothenburg Grand Film Award, 2005, Yad Vashem Award, 2006, Golden Rooster Film Festival award for best director, 2006, Warsaw Jewish Film Festival awards for best director and best screenplay, 2006, Best of Fest, Palm Springs International Film Festival, 2007, Guldbagge Awards for best screenplay and best film, 2006, all for the feature documentary film Ninas resa.

WRITINGS:

TELEVISION DOCUMENTARIES

(And director, producer, editor) The Era of the Car, Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 1993.

(An d director, producer) The Human Quest (four-part series) Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) (Los Angeles, CA), 1993-1995.

(And director, producer) The Great Comet, Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 1995.

(And director, producer) Awakening of the Frozen Addicts, Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 1995-1996.

(And director, producer) Voyage to the Arctic, Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 1996.

(And director, producer) Life in the Universe?, Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 1996-1997.

(And director, producer) Frozen Beauty, Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 1997.

(And director, producer) "Stateless, Arrogant, and Lunatic" (drama documentary; also see below), Lena Einhorn Film and Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 1997-1998.

(And director, producer) From the Shadows of the Past, Lena Einhorn Film and Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 1999-2000.

(And director, producer) Loving Greta Garbo, Lena Einhorn Film and Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 2000.

(And director, producer) Trustor—The Great Sting, Lena Einhorn Film and Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 2001.

(And director, producer) The Riddle of "I," Lena Einhorn Film and Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 2001-2002.

(And director) The Stranger on Bergsunds Strand: The Story of Nobel Prize Laureate Nelly Sachs, Lena Einhorn Film and Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 2002-2003.

(And director) Jan Myrdal, Lena Einhorn Film and Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 2004-2005.

(And director) Women of the Revolution, Lena Einhorn Film and Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 2006.

(And director) Strindberg—A Damn Life, Lena Einhorn Film and Sveriges Television (Stockholm, Sweden), 2008.

NONFICTION

Handelsresande i liv: Om Vilja och Vankelmod i krigets skugga (based on the author's television documentary "Stateless, Arrogant, and Lunatic"; main title means "Trading in Lives"), Prisma (Stockholm, Sweden), 1999.

Ninas resa: En överlevnadsberättelse (see below; main title means "Nina's Journey"), Prisma (Stockholm, Sweden), 2005.

Vad hände på vägen till Damaskus? (title means "What Happened on the Road to Damascus?"), 2006.

The Jesus Mystery: Astonishing Clues to the True Identities of Jesus and Paul, Lyons Press (Guilford, CT), 2007.

OTHER

(And director) Ninas resa: En överlevnadsberättelse (feature documentary film; main title means "Nina's Journey"), Svensk Filmindustri (Stockholm, Sweden), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Filmmaker Lena Einhorn wears a number of hats. She has achieved her greatest renown through her work in television and film documentaries, winning a major Swedish prize for filmmaking, the Guldbagge Award, for her work on Ninas resa: En överlevnadsberättelse ("Nina's Journey"). Nina's Journey is a documentary that traces her mother's life in the Polish ghettos during World War II, when her family had to hide in order to avoid Nazi persecution. But Einhorn is also a medical doctor who holds a Ph.D. "She came to New York in the 1980s," stated a biography on the Pan Agency Web site, "and became the medical editor for Lifetime Television, producing documentaries on science and medicine." She also created award-winning films on the subjects of historical mysteries, such as the origins of the Proto-Indo-European language and the ancestry of the Israelites, who may be related to a mysterious nation referred to in Egyptian sources as the habiru.

In The Jesus Mystery: Astonishing Clues to the True Identities of Jesus and Paul, Einhorn builds on both her own interest in historical mysteries and on modern scholarship regarding the historical Jesus. Since about the eighteenth century, scholars have sought to identify the real story of the man recognized by Christians as the savior of mankind and the son of God. A major advance in this form of scholarship came in the late twentieth century, through what was called the Jesus Project. This group, which included scholars from a variety of different disciplines, relied on the discovery of new sources and on Israeli archaeology for their conclusions. Einhorn constructs her own understanding of Jesus based on the work of such scholars. "Step-by-step, starting with the question of whether Jesus ever existed," stated Ilene Cooper in Booklist, "she brings together all the known (and little-known) clues about the Jesus story." "She provides general readers with a clear survey of Jesus's birth and childhood," Library Journal contributor James R. Kuhlman wrote, "his relationship to John the Baptist, whether he died on the cross," and other questions about the emergence of the early Christian church under the guidance of Paul of Tarsus. Einhorn closes her work by suggesting that Jesus was actually the same person as Paul, who was born about fifteen to twenty years after the traditional date of his birth. "An engaging, informative, articulate, and sometimes iconoclastic work of admirable historical research and scholarship," concluded a contributor to the Internet Bookwatch, The Jesus Mystery is "strongly recommended reading for Christians and non-Christians."