About

Joan Borsten Vidov was born and raised in Los Angeles. Her mother was one of the Navy’s first female officers (then known as WAVES. Her father had a long career in the entertainment industry. Joan graduated UC Berkeley with a degree in comparative literature, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama, and received a graduate degree from USC in bi-lingual education.

She worked as a journalist from 1974-1985, first for Israel’s English language daily “The Jerusalem Post.” She was a regular contributor to the LA Times Calendar (Entertainment) section. In 1985, while living in Rome she met Oleg Vidov, known as the Robert Redford of Russia, who came to Italy to defect from the USSR. When Oleg was given political asylum by the US Government, Joan followed him to Los Angeles. They married several years later.

In 1988 with Oleg she formed Films by Jove Inc., the California-based film production and distribution company, which four years later 1992 acquired worldwide rights (excluding the former USSR) to most of the award-winning animation library of Moscow’s Soyuzmultfilm Studio (approximately 1,200 films). Films by Jove financed digital restoration and marketing of more than 40 hours of animated films produced from 1936-1991 by Soyuzmultfilm successfully defended the Films by Jove license agreement with Soyuzmultfilm Studios and the Studio’s legal copyright in the courts of France and the United States against state-supported Russian piracy until August 2007 when a Russian oligarch bought the rights to the animation library.

Joan and Oleg co-founded Malibu Beach Recovery Center in 2007. Joan served as CEO until the clinic was sold to a medical investment arm of Wells Fargo Bank in 2014. During those years she became an advocate for the California addiction treatment industry with special focus on calling to the attention of regulators and elected officials the need to curb “dirty doctors” who became wealthy turning those with pain and other illnesses into “prescription drug addicts.” In 2016 she co-founded the Addiction Treatment Advocacy Coalition which has slowly begun bringing regulation to the unregulated health insurance companies. In 2018 she became Executive Director of Summit Estate Recovery Center, a high-end treatment facility located in Silicon Valley.

In 2018 she also returned to filmmaking. Her new documentary, “Oleg: The Oleg Vidov Story” will be completed in fall 2020 (see poster below).