Our Team
Co-Directors Dennis Scholl & Kareem Tabsch
Dennis Scholl
Dennis Scholl is an award winning documentary filmmaker whose work is focused on arts and culture.
He co-produced and directed his first feature documentary, Deep City: The Birth of the Miami Sound, with Marlon Johnson and Chad Tingle. The film premiered at the 2014 SXSW International Film Festival, screened at film festivals and was acquired by public broadcast station, WLRN, for international distribution. His second feature, Queen of Thursdays was co-written and produced with noted Cuban filmmaker Orlando Rojas and premiered at the Miami International Film Festival winning Best Documentary. He also produced and directed Symphony in D, the story of America’s first crowd sourced symphony which was performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
He has won thirteen National Academy of Television Arts and Science regional Emmys all for documentaries about art and artists. He is the executive producer of a dozen films with the Miami-based Borscht Film Collective, including six short films that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival including Yearbook, winner of the 2014 Animated Short and Glove which went on to win Best Animated Short at SXSW.
He and his wife, Debra, recently received the National Service to the Arts award from the Anderson Ranch Arts Center. The former VP of Arts at the Knight Foundation, Dennis serves as CEO of ArtCenter South Florida.
He is currently in production on documentaries about Grammy Award-winning jazz singer Cecile Mclorin Salvant and abstract expressionist painter Clyfford Still.
Kareem Tabsch
Kareem Tabsch is the co-founder and co-director of O Cinema, Miami's largest art house cinema; an Award winning documentary filmmaker and an Arts Advocate who strongly believes in the power of the arts, particularly film, to enrich lives and revitalize communities.
As a documentary filmmaker, Kareem's works has been included in several prestigious film festivals. His short documentary Dolphin Lover which he co-directed with Joey Daoud premiered at Slamdance, and went on to win the Best Short Documentary Prize at the LA Film Fest and garner Honorable Mentions at the Sidewalk Film Festival and IndieGrits Festival. His first short film, Cherry Pop: The Story of the World's Fanciest Cat played prestigious festivals including AFI Docs, DocNYC, Provincetown Film Festival, Miami Film Festival and won Best Short Documentary at Sidewalk Film Festival. His films have garnered international press attention from outlets like Comedy Central, Vice, The NY Post, Cosmopolitan, Jezebel, Bravo and from celebrities including Andy Cohen, Rush Limbaugh, and Howard Stern.
In 2013 Kareem was featured in the Miami New Times ‘People Issue’ for his contribution to the cities film culture, he was named a '20 under 40' by the Miami Herald's Business Monday in 2014 and in 2015 was the recipient of the Knight Arts Champion award presented by the Knight Foundation in recognition of O Cinema's contribution to the cultural vibrancy of Greater Miami.
Tabsch has served on the Advisory Committee of the Miami Foundation’s Our Miami initiative, on the National Arts Advisory Committee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In 2018 he helped conceptualize the Cinematic Arts Residency at ArtCenter South Florida.