Jonathan Blank

Jonathan Blank is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and creative technologist. Writing: Jonathan's writing interests include dramatic storytelling in screenplays and stage plays, non-fiction books and articles as well as fiction. He has written numerous screenplays including those for his films, “Anarchy TV,” “Sex, Drugs & Democracy,” and “Collecting America.” Jonathan has spent over 25 years studying high-level martial arts, meditation, Eastern philosophy and esoteric metaphysical practices with many remarkable teachers in the US, Asia and Europe and this has led him to write extensively on these subjects. He has written the books “Secrets of Dragon Gate,” which about Taoism, and “Still as a Mountain, Powerful as Thunder” which is about Buddhist chi gung and meditation, and he is currently working on a book about Zen and Shaolin martial arts. Jonathan is also working on a play about Abraham Lincoln and a young adult novel. Technology: Jonathan recently launched the Reading Kingdom (www.readingkingdom.com), a fun, easy-to-use online program that teaches children 4-10 years old how to read and write to a third grade level. Jonathan developed the software in conjunction with his mother, Dr. Marion Blank, the Director of the Light on Literacy program at Columbia University, who is one of the world’s top experts in literacy. Jonathan is also the founder of Wildform (www.wildform.com), an award-winning presentation, animation and video software company that created Flix, the first Flash video encoding software which revolutionized the web video landscape. Movies: Among Jonathan's award-winning and critically acclaimed films are Sex, Drugs & Democracy ("A seductive argument" --Roger Ebert), Anarchy TV ("A wild, crazy and twisted comedy!" --Jan Wahl of KRON-TV), and Collecting America ("Fascinating…3 ½ stars" --Joseph Gelmis, New York Newsday. (All of these films are available through Amazon.) Jonathan has a BA and an MFA from Columbia University in New York. For more information visit: www.jonathanblank.com