Leon Constantiner

Executive Producer

Leon Constantiner was born and raised in Mexico City.Both his parents -- Dr. Jaime Constantiner and Dr. Joan Sourasky Constantiner -- were philanthropists and crusaders for Jewish causes and education. Staying true to his family’s long tradition of philanthropy has been important to Leon; he is a committed supporter of the arts, culture and education, as well as a prominent collector of photography.

At the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, he established the Constantiner Photography Award, which is given annually to an Israeli photographer.  He also actively supports the Museum’s photography holdings through donations, and by loaning works from his collection. At New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, within the Photography department, he created the Leon and Michaela Constantiner New York Project Fellowship. He has also made important donations to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of the City of New York. He is a devoted supporter of many other cultural institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan Theatre Club, the New York Philharmonic, and Carnegie Hall.

Leon’s passion for photography extends to moving pictures. He produced two features, Intimacy and Angel of Fire, and two shorts, Jump and Ivan the Very Terrible. His movies have been showcased in numerous film festivals, including Cannes, San Sebastian, Tokyo, London, Jerusalem, Cuba, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, among others.  In Israel, Leon and his wife established two important awards that are bestowed annually at the closing of the Jerusalem Film Festival: the Lia Van Leer Award for a film that deals with a Jewish theme, and the Avner Shalev Award at Yad V’shem for an outstanding film that deals with the Holocaust.

With his late father and brothers, Leon established the Joan Sourasky-Constantiner Holocaust Multimedia Research Center at the Jerusalem Cinematheque; and in New York, they endowed the Joan S. Constantiner Jewish and Holocaust Film Fund at the Film Forum cinema. In 2002, the Constantiner brothers endowed the Jaime and Joan Constantiner School Of Education at Tel Aviv University.

Leon is fluent in Spanish and English and has a working knowledge of Hebrew. He holds a degree in Communications with a major in advertising from Anáhuac University in Mexico City. In 1989 he moved to New York City, where he currently resides with his wife and two children.