Ivana Todorovic graduated from Belgrade University with a diploma in Anthropology. Her graduate thesis was her first documentary, Everyday Life of Roma Children from Block 71. At Ateliers Varan Paris, a summer workshop in Belgrade, she made her second video, Adem’s Island.
In 2007, after studying at the New Policy School, an NGO Youth Initiative for Human Rights in Belgrade, Ivana went on to make the short documentary, Rapresent, about a 19-year-old homeless graffiti artist, which premiered at the London International Film Festival LIDF and received Best National Award in the XVIII International Festival of Ethnological Film in Belgrade, Serbia. The film is has screened in numerous festivals including the 2010 Rotterdam Film Festival. The film’s subject, Bojan, overdosed on heroin in June 2009.
Ivana enrolled in the Documentary Media Studies program at the New School in New York in 2008 and made A Harlem Mother, a documentary about broken family relationships due to youth gun violence in Harlem. The film, which had its premiere in October 2009 at the Maysles Cinema, tells “the heart-wrenching story of Jean Corbett-Parker whose love for her son LaTraun, tragically shot, lives on through her work with Harlem Mothers.” Weaving footage from LaTraun’s own film with scenes from Jean’s new life today, A Harlem Mother is a short documentary that tells this tragic and inspirational story from the dual perspectives of mother and son. The documentary is currently in the festival circuit and recently screened at the 2010 Festival de Cannes – Short Film Corner. It has won awards in the “Videnie” Documentary Film Festival in Russia, Mixed Messages Film Festival in New York and the Carolina Film and Video Festival.
