Melissa Weisz
Melissa grew up in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn. She left her community a couple of years ago and has since discovered her passion for the theatre and the arts. Her background gives her a unique view and perspective which she brings to her work.
Melissa started her acting career playing Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish" which premiered at Lincoln Center and won the Gerhardt Klein Audience Award in Berlin in 2011! She has since starred in many award winning independent films and shorts including " The visit" ,"I arrived" and "Black Star
Melissa is currently in post-production on a short film, Summer, with writer/director Pearl Gluck. Gluck’s films include her debut documentary feature, Divan (2004), and her fictional short, Where Is Joel Baum (2012), featuring Lynn Cohen and Luzer Twersky.
Melissa presented Summer at Art Kibbutz's Creative Queers Picnic on August 28th, a short film about two teenage girls in a Hasidic sleep-a-way camp who, despite their every effort to maintain their purity, explore a forbidden book which leads them to a sexual awakening neither of them Summer are prepared to encounter. She also participated in a staged reading related to the film.
As part of the the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s and The Jewish Museum’s, 27th Annual New York Jewish Film Festival from Jan 10th - 23rd 2018, Art Kibbutz was proud to announce the World Premier of Summer a film by JWF/Art Kibbutz fellow Pearl Gluck
which was screened on Sunday, January 21st 8:30pm - co-produced by Melissa Weisz and Malky Lipshitz. Before the show, staff and friends of Art Kibbutz met at Gebhard's Beer Culture for drinks and conversation.