Mr. Tornado

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

The Master Palindromist

OTHER WORK

Stories from the Stage

About

MOVING PICTURE STORIES.

Rossi Films helps individuals, companies, institutions, and organizations realize their storytelling potential by providing veteran production experience to create cinematic, character-driven documentary films across all media platforms. Clients include: WGBH, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Museum of Science, Boston, Sportsmen's Tennis & Enrichment Center, U.S. Rowing, ZeroTurnaround, MIT Media Lab, the National Museum of the American Indian, Sperry Top-Sider, Jumptap, and the Resiliency Advocacy Project.

MICHAEL ROSSI has spent over twenty years creating national programs for public television. In 2012, Rossi received an Emmy Award for his work as Coordinating Producer of the children's engineering series Design Squad. Most recently he received Webby Awards in 2020 and 2021 for his work as Producer, Director, and Editor of Stories from the Stage, a live, storytelling series and Co-Production between Rossi Films and GBH WORLD Channel. For American Experience Rossi produced, wrote, and directed The Race Underground in 2017, a one-hour film about America's first subway and Mr. Tornado, a one-hour film about famed severe weather expert Tetsuya Theodore Fujita, which had a national PBS broadcast in 2020. Other production credits for American Experience include: Building the Alaska Highway; The Gold Rush (2007 Erik Barnouw Award); We Shall Remain, a five-part television series and multimedia project on Native American history; The Rise and Fall of Penn Station; and The Bombing of Wall Street. He also served as an embedded filmmaker on the 2011 Student Freedom Ride; produced a series of short films for Freedom Summer @ 50, profiling participants of the 1964 Freedom Summer project in Mississippi; and created a series of four short films for The Boys of '36, profiling U.S. Olympic rowers. Rossi's credits for Frontline include The Silence, which traces the healing between the small, Yup'ik village of St. Michael, Alaska and the Catholic Church in the devastating aftermath of sexual abuse perpetrated by priests in the 1960s and 1970s.

Rossi completed the B.A./M.A. program in U.S. History at Boston College and teaches documentary film in the Art, Art History, and Film Department at Boston College. His cinematography is exhibited in many documentary films including The Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano (Tribeca Film Festival premiere 2015, directed by Joshua Seftel) and Before You Know It (SXSW premiere, 2013, directed by PJ Raval).

Rossi's current projects include The Master Palindromist, a feature-length documentary about Barry Duncan, a self-proclaimed master of reversibility honing his skills in an effort to reassess his life, and possibly change the world.

Press
Michael Rossi Does It All
Making Media Now, podcast, 2021

New Documentary Details Life and Career of Ted Fujita, 'Mr, Tornado'
Weather Underground, Category 6, 2020

'Mr. Tornado' Features 1974 Super Outbreak That Hit Xenia, Cincinnati
Cincinnati Public Radio, Cincinnati Edition, 2020

Faculty member Michael Rossi tells the story of one man's pursuit to understand the deadliest storms
Boston College Chronicle, 2020

The Race Underground presents an engrossing look at Boston's first Big Dig
The Boston Globe, 2017

The Race Underground: Film Review
Los Angeles Times, 2017

"MetroFocus" Interview with Michael Rossi
WNET/Thirteen, 2017

Jose Martinez talks about "The Race Underground" with filmmaker Michael Rossi
NY1, "In Transit," 2017

Radio Interview with Michael Rossi, Preview of 'The Race Underground'
WGTD Public Radio, Racine/Kenosha, Wisconsin, 2017

Newbury historian-turned-filmmaker goes 'underground' in Boston
Newburyport Daily News, 2017

Meet the Filmmaker: Making the Documentary About America's First Subway
Doug Most, 2015

Filming Living History: An Interview With Award-Winning TV Documentary Producer Michael Rossi
Film International, 2014

Documentary Preview: "The Rise and Fall of Penn Station"
New York Preservation Archive Project, 2013

Michael Rossi films “Making Nothing Happen: The Strange Poetics of Barry Duncan”
Believer Magazine, 2012

Filmmaker Michael Rossi Tackles Wordplay with his AG-AF100
Panasonic, 2012

Awards
Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approaches in a Daytime Children Series
Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, 2012