Cultural Mining

Altina Schinasi, a tobacco heiress born in a veritable palace in Manhattan, made her name as an artist, activist, designer, filmmaker, and as an openly-sexual woman, with four husbands over the course of her lifetime. Altina is a new documentary about this unknwon but fascinating character. Winner of the festival’s 2013 DAVID A. STEIN MEMORIAL AWARD, it’s having its Canadian premier at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. And I am pleased to have the award-winning filmmaker, Peter Sanders to talk to me about the film and its fascinating subject with me by telephone from New York.