Cornelia Ravenal is an award-winning creator with work performed at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and regional theaters, published in Asia and the US, screened at 70+ festivals and distributed in ...Show More
Cornelia Ravenal is an award-winning creator with work performed at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and regional theaters, published in Asia and the US, screened at 70+ festivals and distributed internationally. A co-founder of Wilderness Films, she has over thirty years experience writing and producing for stage and screen.A writer of over 20 scripts, she has written screenplays for Lars von Trier's Zentropa and Oscar-winning producer Charlie Wessler ("Dumb & Dumber," "Green Book"). She also co-wrote the script for the upcoming "1947: Where Now Begins" based on the international bestseller.Her scripts have been recognized by the Academy Nicholl Fellowship (Semi-finalist, top 2% out of 6,000+ submissions), Sundance Screenwriting Lab (two-time Second Rounder), and three times by The Writers Lab funded by Meryl Streep (2016: Semi-finalist, top 3%, 2017: Finalist, top 2%, 2018: Lab, top 1%).As a producer, her projects include the off-Broadway hit, NY Times Critic's Pick, "Nirbhaya" (2015) and the award-winning feature documentary "Moving Stories" (2018) directed by Sundance winner Rob Fruchtman, for which she was also a co-filmmaker with Mikael Södersten.Films and scripts she's consulted on include "Stockholm Stories" (Sonet), "The Tale" (HBO) and "The Brothers Lionheart" (Spark Film & TV).Previously, she was a journalist and cultural critic with 60+ articles and opinions pieces published in The New York Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Verve, Art Asia Pacific and others. From 1996-98, she was a US Correspondent for India Today, India's leading news magazine.In the 1990s, she also worked as a speechwriter, communications strategist and writer or producer of 40+ videos and events for Fortune 500 clients.She began her career in musical theater, writing book, music & lyrics for the hit musical "Out of the Reach of Children," winner of the Seagram Award for New Music Theater and the longest running show in the history of DC's New Playwrights Theater. She also co-wrote book & lyrics for the off-off Broadway hit "Two's a Crowd" with Linda Semans, music by Zina Goldrich. More recently, she wrote lyrics for the Susan Seidelman musical "Boynton Beach Club" with composer Ned Ginsburg.She cut her musical theater teeth in the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop with Stephen Schwartz ("Wicked") and in the Lehman Engel BMI Music Theater Workshop with Skip Kennon and Maury Yeston. ("Nine").She also founded some of the first industry networking groups. In the 1990s and 2000s she founded and ran salons at the National Arts Club for arts & entertainment professionals. With Newsweek Europe's Managing Editor Mike Meyer, she ran a monthly networking event at Ismael Merchant's Pondicherry for diplomats and foreign correspondents.In 2014 she founded the Women Producers Group, now WIP (Women Independent Producers).She earned a BA from Harvard University, studied Dramatic Writing in the Graduate Program at NYU/Tisch, and was a fellow in the AFI Comedy Writers Workshop.Cornelia's family comes from Eastern Europe, India, the Middle East and Scandinavia and embraces all five major religions, bringing a multifaceted perspective and diverse influences to everything she produces and creates.She frequently works with Mikael Södersten, with whom she founded Wilderness Films. Hide
