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American Masters Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future

Premieres nationwide Tuesday, December 27 at 8 p.m. on PBS

(check local listings)

Production Bios

Peter Rosen

Producer and Director

Peter Rosen has produced and directed over 100 full-length films and television programs which

have been distributed worldwide and have won awards at all the major film festivals. He has

worked directly with some of the most important figures in the arts such as Leonard Bernstein,

Yo-Yo Ma, Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Stephen Sondheim, Alexander Godunov, Midori,

Martha Graham, Plácido Domingo, Van Cliburn, Claudio Arrau, Byron Janis, I. M. Pei, Nobuyuki

Tsujii, and Garrison Keillor.

He won the prestigious Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award in 1990 for his

production Here to Make Music: The Eighth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The

show also won a Primetime Emmy Award in 1990, and was called “enriching and inspiring” by

New York Daily News. He was again nominated for the DGA Award in 1998 for his film, First

Person Singular: I. M. Pei. The Cliburn: Playing on the Edge, with KERA/PBS, sponsored by

ExxonMobil, won the prestigious Peabody Award in 2001.

Recent international primetime broadcasts of Rosen’s films include Touching the Sound

on blind pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii; There Will Be Music on composer and oil man Gordon Getty;

50 Years of Gold, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition;

American Masters – Jascha Heifetz: God’s Fiddler, which won the Echo Klassik Award,

Japanese Record Academy Award, and the Audience Award at the San Diego Film Festival; A

Surprise in Texas, on the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which won the

Gramophone Magazine Award and Best Documentary at the Beverly Hills Film Festival,

amongst other honors; The Byron Janis Story, on the pianist’s battle against crippling arthritis;

American Masters — Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes;

Shadows in Paradise, on Europe’s musical exiles who fled Hitler for Southern California; In the

Key of G: The Gilmore International Keyboard Festival for PBS; Master of the House, a film

broadcast on PBS as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s tribute to Joseph Volpe; A Workshop for

Peace, an hour-long documentary commissioned by the United Nations on its 60th anniversary;

Great Conversations in Music, commissioned by the Library of Congress; and Who Gets to Call

it Art?, a feature-length documentary on curator Henry Geldzahler.

In the 2003-2004 television season, Rosen produced and directed the feature-length

documentary Khachaturian about the Russian-Armenian composer on the occasion of the 100th

anniversary of his birth. Shown in theatres and on television worldwide, the film won the Best

Documentary Award at the Hollywood Film Festival. Other films for PBS include The Hollywood

Bowl: Music Under the Stars, a co-production with WDR German Television; A Thousand Years

of Music and Spirit, taped in Krakow; and Once Upon a Sleigh Ride, a documentary on

American composer Leroy Anderson.

Highlights of previous television seasons include Enrico Caruso: Voice of the Century

and The Museum on the Mountain, on I. M. Pei’s new Miho Museum in Kyoto. This program

won the Gold Medal at the 1998 New York Film and Television Festival. Midori Live at Carnegie

Hall; If I Were A Rich Man, a portrait of Jan Peerce; and Playing for Peace, a 60-minute

documentary about Middle East peace, which aired nationally on PBS. Rosen’s earlier

productions include Carnegie Hall at 100: A Place of Dreams (PBS), Reflections: Leonard

Bernstein (BBC) and Omnibus (ABC, 1986). In 1985, he produced and directed American

Masters – Rubinstein Remembered and Toscanini: The Maestro (1988) for Great

Performances, both of which were broadcast on PBS and internationally.

Rosen earned a B.Arch. from Cornell University and B.F.A. and M.F.A. from Yale

University. He served at Yale University as a fellow at Trumbull College and an instructor in the

art department. Rosen lives in New York City, where he was born and raised.

Eric Saarinen, ASC

Director of Photography and Co-producer

Eric Saarinen, ASC, is one of America’s most admired commercial directors and

cinematographers. His work as a director of photography encompasses 15 theatrical features,

including Albert Brooks’ Lost in America, The Hills Have Eyes, and Exploratorium, Oscar

nominee for Best Documentary, Short Subject. His commercial work directing and shooting

hundreds of television commercials garnered 13 Clios, six AICP Awards, two Gold Hugos, and

virtually every major advertising award, including the Grand Prix at Cannes for the World’s Best

Commercial of the Year for Jeep’s “Snowcovered” (1994) spot. This marked the first time an

automobile commercial won the prestigious award and the spot was later voted one of the Top 10

Best Automotive Commercials in the past 25 years by the Art Directors Guild One Show.

Saarinen is the son of architect and designer Eero Saarinen. His mother, Lily Saarinen,

was a sculptor, artist and educator. She was also a member of the first women’s Olympic Ski

Team. His grandfather was the acclaimed Finnish architect and designer, Eliel Saarinen. Charles

and Ray Eames were his godparents.

Saarinen’s early life was spent at the Cranbrook Art Institute (Bloomfield Hills, Mich.).

Every day he was surrounded with the beauty and inspiration of this rarified world while his

grandfather and father helped to create the campus, along with their collaborators and friends:

the Eames, Harry Bertoia, Carl Milles, Florence Knoll, Harry Weese, Ralph Rapson, Marianne

Strengell and many more. He earned his B.A. at Goddard College and M.A. in filmmaking at

UCLA.

Saarinen started his career directing and producing films focused on art. Projects

included those for the Museum of Modern Art, Gemini G.E.L. and Pepsi’s Expo ’70 Pavilion in

Japan. Music videos were also a mainstay: Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, George Benson, Al

Jarreau, the Bee Gees, Pat Metheny, Neil Young and Peter Tosh, to name a few.

An overarching theme to Saarinen’s life has been his love of the road less traveled. Drawn

to the unexpected, the unfamiliar, and the unknown, he selects projects for the quotient of

adventure they promised. Saarinen has an uncanny ability to pick a moment. His natural

curiosity and yearning for the new landed him in the midst of some of the most significant

historical events in modern American history: traveling with Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland

in the midst of American political turmoil to U.S. barracks across Asia; the 1968 Democratic

National Convention in Chicago during the riots; filming the Altamont concert with the Rolling

Stones for Gimme Shelter (1970); and documenting a frightened Robert Kennedy at the

Ambassador Hotel right before he was shot.

His remarkable adventures, and his powerful footage documenting them, continued. He

spent three months on board Jacques Cousteau’s seaplane in the Sea of Cortez, and another

three months living on the ocean floor with the Glomar Challenger deep sea drilling project.

Saarinen’s early career culminated with the film Symbiosis for The Land pavilion at Epcot at the

Walt Disney World Resort. Natural and ancient man-made wonders of the world were filmed in

70 mm, revealing the history of man’s relationship with the environment. The last time these

lenses were used, and then carefully preserved, was for Lawrence of Arabia. Although only 16

minutes long, Saarinen circumnavigated the globe two-and-a-half times during the 13-month

shoot. The film was seen by approximately 28 million people during its 13-year run.

After seeing the evocative piece and realizing what Saarinen’s vision could bring to the

world of broadcast commercials, a friend proposed a new breed of commercial production

company, and together they formed Plum Productions. During Plum’s successful 27-year run,

Saarinen traveled the world as a director and cameraman and became one of the most highly-

awarded advertising director/cinematographers with hundreds of television commercials to his

credit.

Saarinen is a director/cameraman in the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and was the

first director of photography ever to be inducted into the American Society of Cinematographers

(ASC) for “Extraordinary Achievement in the Field of Television Commercials.” He has also been

inducted into the Finnish Society of Cinematographers (AFC).

He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Kantor

Executive Producer

For more than two decades, award-winning filmmaker Michael Kantor has created outstanding

arts programs for television. He joined American Masters as the series’ executive producer in

April 2014 during its 28th season on PBS, and founded its theatrical imprint American Masters

Pictures in January 2016. American Masters Pictures was represented by three films at the 2016

Sundance Film Festival: Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, Maya Angelou: And Still I

Rise and Richard Linklater – dream is destiny.

Prior to joining American Masters, his PBS documentary series Superheroes: A

Never-Ending Battle (2013), hosted by Liev Schreiber, was nominated for an Emmy Award.

Random House published the companion book. Kantor’s Peabody Award-winning film

Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy (2013) aired as part of the Great Performances series on

PBS. Narrated by Joel Grey, it included performances by Matthew Broderick, Kelli O’Hara, David

Hyde Pierce, Marc Shaiman and many other Broadway talents. In 2012, Kantor produced The

Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater with Michael Tilson

Thomas, which aired on PBS and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy. Kantor served as

executive producer of the special Give Me the Banjo, hosted by Steve Martin, and created Make

’Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America (2009), the critically acclaimed six-part

documentary series hosted by Billy Crystal. His script for episode four, When I’m Bad, I’m

Better: The Groundbreakers, co-authored with Laurence Maslon, was nominated for a

Primetime Emmy Award. His landmark six-part series Broadway: The American Musical was

hosted by Julie Andrews and honored with the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding

Nonfiction Series in 2005. That same year, he created three hours of DVD extras for 20th Century

Fox’s 40th anniversary release of The Sound of Music.

Kantor wrote, directed and produced the award-winning profile American Masters:

Quincy Jones: In the Pocket. With Stephen Ives, he co-directed Cornerstone: An Interstate

Adventure for HBO, and produced The West (executive producer Ken Burns). His 20 years of

work in documentaries include projects as varied as EGG: the arts show, Coney Island, The

Donner Party, Margaret Sanger and Ric Burns’ New York series. As a writer, Kantor created

Lullaby of Broadway: Opening Night on 42nd Street, co-authored the companion books to

Broadway (Bulfinch) and Make ’Em Laugh (Grand Central Publishing) and has published

numerous essays and articles. He is president of Almo Inc., a company that distributes the

American Film Theatre series, which includes Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance (starring

Katharine Hepburn), Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (Lee Marvin) and Chekhov’s Three

Sisters (Laurence Olivier) among its titles. Kantor has served as a Tony nominator and taught

documentary filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He was born in New

Haven, Conn., and lives in Scarsdale, N.Y.

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