About the Filmmaker

Karen Shenfeld is a Toronto-based filmmaker, writer, and editor. After working for years as a print magazine journalist and editor, she branched out into the documentary film industry. She was engaged as a researcher and production assistant for Street Racing: The Need for Speed by Associated Producers (first aired on "The Inside Story," A & E, in January 2000). She then worked as the head researcher on Friendly Fire, produced by YAP Films (first aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, in June 2004). Some other gigs include the following: She was engaged as a story consultant for Ma Jeanne D'Arc, directed by Dany Chiasson (which premiered at the 2012 Cinefranco Festival), as an additional cameraman on We Ain't Rich or Famous but We Are The Happy Pals directed by Jay Bajaj (screened at the 2011 Montreal World Film Festival and the 2012 Shanghai International Film Festival) and as an additional editor on What's Art Got To Do With It, directed by Isabel Fryszberg (which premiered at the 2013 Female Eye Film Festival and was first aired on the CBC's Documentary Channel in May 2014).

In the winter of 2007, Karen Shenfeld completed her first independent documentary, Il Giardino, The Gardens of Little Italy. Poignant and personal, the film is a lyrical ode that celebrates the filmmaker's own neighbourhood in Toronto. Through intimate conversation with lively subjects, and bucolic hands-on footage, it documents the urban garden as a unique setting for self- and cultural expression. At the same time, it vividly explores how the garden can deepen the relationship between an individual and her community. Il Giardino first screened at the 2007 Toronto Italian Film Festival and 2007 Planet in Focus International Environmental Film and Video Festival. Shenfeld was interviewed about it on the popular CBC radio shows, Metro Morning and Here and Now.

Maggie and Merly is Karen Shenfeld's second independent documentary. She is currently shooting a third documentary and writing a screenplay that has been optioned by Canadian director Bruce McDonald. Besides being a filmmaker, Shenfeld is also a poet who has had three books published by Guernica Editions, and is working on her fourth. She brings her poetic sensibility to the making of documentary films.