Robert H. Lieberman is a novelist, film director, and a long-time member of the Physics faculty at Cornell University. Initially he came to Cornell to study to be a veterinarian, but ended up becoming an electrical engineer and doing research in neurophysiology. He has also been professor of mathematics, engineering and the physical sciences and was recently awarded the John M. and Emily B. Clark Award for Distinguished Teaching at Cornell University. He earned his bachelor's degree from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1962.
Work outside the classroom
Dr. Robert Lieberman: "They Call it Myanmar" | Talks at Google - Shot clandestinely over a 2-year period by best-selling novelist and filmmaker, Robert H. Lieberman, this film provides a rare look at the second-most isolated country on the planet, Burma....
Lieberman is presently engaged in two major film projects: a feature documentary set in Cambodia, and an adaptation of his novel “The Nazis, My Father & Me†with French Producer Didier Brunner. Brunner, the “Godfather†of French animation is a five-time Academy Award nominated producer.
His previous film, “They Call It Myanmar,†is an inside look at Burma and features Nobel Laureate Aung San Sang Suu Kyi. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Times cited it as one of the “top dozen documentaries of 2012.†His newly released novel “The Boys of Truxton†is set in Upstate New York and deals with a teenager convicted of a heinous crime. In fact, many of Lieberman’s novels appear to be set in Ithaca, New York, where he continues to live on a 135-acre (0.55 km2) farm. Ithaca frequently appears in his films, either for setting, detail, or theme. The feature comedy Green Lights, which he wrote and directed, is the story of a small town swept up into a frenzy by a location scout who is taken for a big film producer. His film Last Stop Kew Gardens is a personal exploration in which he returns to the “small town†within the city of Queens, New York, where he was raised, the child of refugees from Hitler’s Vienna. In Faces in a Famine Lieberman goes to Ethiopia during the height of the famine and provides a novelist’s eye view of the people who descended on the scene, the relief workers, the press and the “disaster groupies.â€
Lieberman has been awarded a series of Fulbright Lectureships. The first in 1989 was to lecture at the Academy of Performing Arts and Film in Bratislava. In 2002 he was a resident lecturer with the Mowel Film Fund in Manila. As a Senior Specialist with the Fulbright Program he went to Burma to work with young film directors in the country and he recently returned from a specialist position in Cambodia where he was also shooting a new film.
Lieberman is often confused with another film director of the same name, but not bearing the middle initial “H.†who is not a novelist.
Fiction
- The Last Boy
- Perfect People
- Baby
- Goobersville Breakdown
- Paradise Rezoned
Filmography
- Last Stop Kew Gardens
- Green Lights
- Faces in a Famine
- Boyce Ball
- They Call It Myanmar
- Angkor Awakens
References
External links
- They Call It Myanmar
- Ithaca Films
- Last Stop Kew Gardens
- The Last Boy
- Physics 012
- Cornell University Biography
