Eric Merola, (Director Bio)
Eric Merola, Director & Producer – Bio
Today, Eric Merola is an internationally award-winning documentary film director.
Before starting his career in documentary films, Eric was a painter, painting massive 6 to 8 foot paintings, using oil on canvas. He occasionally does a painting or two on commission, but has spent his recent years as a documentary filmmaker.
After moving to New York as a painter, he soon became a motion graphics designer and animator after founding Merola Productions and was commissioned by various clients including Campbell’s Soup, Fuel TV, Volkswagen, WE Network, The Speed Channel, Old Navy, MoveOn(.org), Cartoon Network and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi. He was also employed as an animation director for FlickerLab in New York City, where he worked on projects for Comedy Central and A&E.
In 2007, Eric began production on his first documentary, BURZYNSKI, which garnered widespread distribution and won numerous international awards including “Best Documentary of 2011” on The Documentary Channel, two “Audience Awards” at the HumanDoc Film Festival in Warsaw and the “Humanitarian Vision Award” at the Newport Beach Film Festival. This film also received favorable reviews from various press including The Los Angeles Times and Variety, and granted Mr. Merola a guest appearance on The Dr. Oz Show.
In 2013, Eric released a sequel to BURZYNSKI, which also garnered world-wide distribution and won the top Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary at the Sedona International Film Festival on March 2, 2014.
In August of 2014, Eric Merola released his third documentary, SECOND OPINION: LAETRILE AT SLOAN-KETTERING, theatrically in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Portland, and Seattle. It received rave reviews from the media, and garnered a 45-second plug on CBS’s internationally syndicated TV show, “The Doctors”.