Full Biography
David Novack is the director, and a writer/producer of Finding
Babel. Prior to his work with Finding Babel, Mr. Novack wrote,
produced and directed the film Burning the Future: Coal in
America, which opened in theaters, aired on international
television, and won awards at numerous festivals in the US and
Europe including the prestigious IDA Pare Lorentz award for
social documentary filmmaking. Mr. Novack toured with Burning
the Future to China and Ukraine with the American Documentary
Showcase, sponsored by the US Department of State. With the
program, Mr. Novack lectured extensively at universities and film
festivals and was profiled in magazines and television programs.
Mr. Novack produced Kimjongilia, a documentary about N. Korean refugees that premiered at
the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and enjoyed a theatrical run at the International Documentary
Association’s Docuweeks Theatrical Showcase. Kimjongilia aired in the US and abroad. The
film won the 2010 best human rights documentary award from the One World Brussels Film
Fest of the Human Rights and Democracy Network.
In audio post production, Mr. Novack has enjoyed a successful career as a re-recording
mixer/sound designer, recently adding a major new opera by Roger Waters to his credits. Mr.
Novack received an engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and a degree in
music from Berklee College of Music. In additional to making films, Mr. Novack is a Professor of
Film at the University of Pennsylvania’s
