producer & Director
Daniel Allentuck
For forty years, Daniel Allentuck has worked at the intersection of writing, research, and filmmaking — building documentary films that go looking for what the historical record left out. His instinct is the researcher's instinct: find the letters, find the footage, find the names. Then find the form that does them justice. They Fight With Cameras is the fullest expression of that work — and the most personal so far.
CO-FOUNDER, DAEDALUS PRODUCTIONS, INC. • AWARD-WINNING WRITER & PRODUCER • INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY ASSOCIATION
Filmmaker. Writer.
Archive Detective.
Daniel Allentuck is an award-winning writer and producer and co-founder of Daedalus Productions, Inc. In collaboration with his partner Nina Rosenblum, he has devoted his forty-year career to creating documentary films about art, social photography, and American social history — films that seek out the stories conventional media leaves behind.
He directed the investigation that became They Fight With Cameras: combing through the National Archives, tracing Signal Corps footage across commercial film houses, and ultimately uncovering the letters Walter Rosenblum had written from the front — 180 of them, held for sixty years by a man the family had never met, who simply wanted them to reach Walter's family before it was too late.
They Fight With Cameras
Allentuck co-wrote and co-directed They Fight With Cameras alongside Nina Rosenblum. What began as a 2014 photography exhibition grew into nearly a decade of archival research — piecing together the wartime story of Signal Corps combat cameraman Walter Rosenblum from photographs, never-before-seen 16mm footage, after-action reports, and those long-lost letters.
The result is a 55-minute documentary narrated by Liev Schreiber, endorsed by the USC Shoah Foundation, recognized at twelve international film festivals, and equipped — through Allentuck's research — with the names of men who had been anonymous to history for eighty years.
WRITING & PUBLISHING
ON THE RECORD
Daniel's work extends beyond film. His essays and articles have appeared in the IDA Journal (Documentary Magazine), Lies of Our Times, and the anthology One Last Lunch (Abrams Press, 2020). He also contributed to the book They Fight With Cameras: Walter Rosenblum in World War II From D-Day to Dachau (Edizioni Postcart, Rome, 2014) — the publication that preceded and helped shape the documentary.
He holds a B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from New York University, and is a member of the International Documentary Association. He is the son of actress Maureen Stapleton.
PRODUCTION COMPANY
DAEDALUS PRODUCTIONS, INC.
In 1980, Allentuck and Nina Rosenblum co-founded Daedalus Productions, Inc. — a not-for-profit documentary film and television company based in New York City, built to produce films on subjects not covered by conventional media. Over four decades, the company has produced work for PBS, HBO, Showtime, NBC, ABC, and international broadcasters across Europe and Australia.
Daedalus is a member in good standing of the worldwide non-fiction film community, and its films have received recognition at festivals and institutions across the United States and Europe.
“Because Walter died in 2006, we couldn't interview him about any of this. But we knew that in 1997 he'd been interviewed by the USC Shoah Foundation — and when we accessed that interview, we realized we now had all the elements we needed.”
— Daniel Allentuck’s Director's Statement
Slate from Walter Rosenblum’s WWII footage.