Laurel Vlock Filmmaker-In-Residence Fellowship
Laurel Fox Vlock grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. As a television journalist she produced many interviews for Channel 8 in New Haven including a documentary about the Yom Hashoah observance in 1978. Realizing the power of survivor testimony, Laurel Vlock initiated a meeting with Dr. Dori Laub, a child survivor and psychiatrist. It resulted in a taping session in Dr. Laub’s office that marked the beginning of the Holocaust Survivors Film Project. She participated in 187 taping sessions and produced several edited programs based on the testimonies including the Emmy award winning "Forever Yesterday."
In her honor, the Laurel Vlock Filmmaker-In-Residence Fellowship supports filmmakers to produce a series of films based on testimonies from the Fortunoff Video Archive.
For more information on the films being produced by our Vlock fellows, visit the Vlock Film Series page.
Current Fellows
Aleksander MakowskiLaurel Fox Vlock Fellow 2026
Aleksander Makowski (b. 1990) is an interdisciplinary artist working across animation, moving image, graphic design, and music, based in Warsaw, Poland. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, his practice treats sound and image as equal narrative elements, emphasizing restraint, rhythm, and repetition over spectacle. His debut animated film Opus Magnum premiered at the prestigious, Oscars-qualifying Animator Poznań and was screened internationally. He composed music for award-winning films including Letters from Wolf Street (premiered at Berlinale 2025) and Confession of a Mole (IDFA 2025). Alongside film work, he has directed music videos presented internationally and featured in Rolling Stone, Brooklyn Vegan, and The Quietus.
Instagram: @almakowski
Réka SzabóLaurel Fox Vlock Fellow 2026
Réka Szabó is an artist and director from Budapest, Hungary. She earned her degree in mathematics and informatics, and during her studies, she fell in love with contemporary dance. She was the founder and artistic director of The Symptoms, one of the most significant contemporary dance-theatre companies in Hungary between 2002-2023.
Szabó also directed two short films and the feature-length documentary The Euphoria of Being. Over the years, The Symptoms was invited to various festivals and venues in Europe and was a regular participant in the Desiré Festival in Subotica. In 2014, their show Apropos 2.0 premiered at the Alexander Kasser Theater of Montclair State University, New Jersey. Szabó has also led acting and dance classes at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Montclair State University. Through this fellowship, Szabó will edit, produce and publish the recording of the dance theater performance Sea Lavender which she directed, and she will also edit, produce and publish extra scenes to her documentary movie The Euphoria of Being which won the Critics Week’s Grand Prix for best documentary at the Locarno Film Festival and the Human Rights Award at the Sarajevo Film Festival among others. Both of these works honor the legacy of Holocaust survivor Éva Fahidi.
Photograph by Giorgia Bertocchi.