Edward Cohen

 

Edward Cohen Photo by Mikul Robins

Edward Cohen was born in Jackson, Mississippi, on July 3, 1948. A former head writer and executive producer for Mississippi Educational Television, Cohen has produced a number of documentaries on southern or Jewish subjects, including Good Mornin’ Blues with B.B. King; The Islander, starring James Best; Passover; and Hanukkah, narrated by Ed Asner, all broadcast nationally by PBS. His other documentaries include The Parchman Trials (an exposé of Mississippi’s penal farm), and The Last Confederates (the story of the little known culture of the descendants of the expatriate Confederates who emigrated to Brazil after the Civil War). His documentary work has received numerous international film festival awards, as well as two CINE Golden Eagles.

More recently he wrote, produced, directed and edited The Natchez Jewish Experience for the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience. The film tells the bittersweet story of a once-thriving congregation in Natchez, Mississippi, now down to a handful of members dedicated to keeping their temple open until the last member shuts out the lights. The documentary won the Judah P. Magnes Museum Muse Award for Best Historical Documentary.

In 1999, he published The Peddler’s Grandson: Growing Up Jewish in Mississippi, a memoir in which he describes growing up in the heart of the Bible Belt in the 1950s. The book was honored by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters as the winner of its nonfiction award in 2000. Cohen also was awarded the Mississippi Authors Award for Nonfiction by the Mississippi Library Association in 2000.

Today, Cohen lives with his wife and three cairn terriers in Venice, California, where he is a freelance writer and filmmaker.

(Article first posted November 2001)

Related Links & Info

You can find out more about Edward Cohen and The Peddler's Grandson at the web site for the book.