HILAN WARSHAW is an Emmy Award-winning director and writer. He has produced and directed internationally broadcast films featuring some of today’s most prominent musical artists, including Wagner’s Jews (WDR/ARTE, PBS-WNET, Israel’s Channel 8, Deutsche Welle and others); Secret Song with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet (SVT, Medici TV, PBS-AllArts, Allegro HD, EuroArts); Through the Darkness: Arnold Schoenberg and Richard Gerstl (ORF, SVT, YLE, and Medici TV); My Boléro with Nathalie Stutzmann (PBS-GPB, Medici TV; 2024 Southeast Emmy winner, Best Arts/Entertainment Long Form); In the Key of Bach (PBS-GPB); In the Station (PBS-KCET); Honorable Mr. Morgenthau (premiere screenings in May 2024); and the forthcoming Mahler in New York (SVT and others). In addition to these films of his, Hilan’s other writing and video editing credits include cultural documentaries and specials broadcast on WDR/ARTE, NHK, PBS, and other international networks. He is currently developing a feature screenplay.
Since autumn 2020, Hilan has worked as video director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, directing acclaimed multi-camera concert captures released on-demand and broadcast on regional NBC and PBS. He writes and hosts Piece by Piece, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s video series exploring the stories behind musical masterworks. He is a Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow, and has served as a juror for the Emmy Awards and International Emmy Awards. He has produced and edited numerous video and documentary projects for organizations including Carnegie Hall, New York City Opera, League of American Orchestras, Fund for the City of New York, American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and Warner Music, among many others.
His research essays on film and Wagnerian opera have been published in anthologies from Cambridge University Press, McFarland Press, and Königshausen & Neumann and in periodicals including The Wagner Journal, and he has taught lecture and film production courses at Barnard College and Western Carolina University. He has been a lecturer and panelist at venues including London’s Barbican Centre, Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Arts, Yale University, Columbia University, Boston University, NYU’s Deutsches Haus, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Minnesota Opera, Wagner Society of New York, and the Morgan Library & Museum, among many others. Hilan’s other commissioned and published writing includes verse librettos for musical works by Dalit Warshaw and Lera Auerbach, and for Saint-Saëns’ “Carnival of the Animals.”
He holds a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. An experienced violinist and conductor, he studied orchestral conducting at Mannes College of Music and the Aspen Music School.