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Joan Borsten Vidov was born in Santa Monica on August 17, 1947. Her mother, Laura (1912–2003), was among the Navy's first female officers (then WAVES), serving in Pearl Harbor during World War II and retiring as a Lieutenant Commander. Her father, Orin Borsten (1912–2005), arrived in Hollywood in 1944 and enjoyed a lengthy career in the entertainment industry. As a publicist, he represented clients such as Dorothy Dandridge, Mario Lanza, and Hattie McDaniel. He also wrote one of the early episodes of The Outer Limits (1963) and worked as a studio executive at MGM and Universal Studios. After retiring, he co-authored "A Loving Gentleman: The Love Story of William Faulkner and Meta Carpenter," published by Simon and Schuster, and, with his wife Laura, "Once A Wave."
Joan earned a degree in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, volunteered with the Peace Corps in Panama, and obtained a graduate degree in bilingual education. In 1973, she moved to Tel Aviv and joined Israel’s English-language daily, The Jerusalem Post, as a staff reporter. There, she interviewed prominent Israeli politicians and celebrities, covered the peace process with Egypt, the 1983 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and wrote feature stories on Egyptian First Lady Jehan Sadat and Tunisian First Lady Wasilla Bourguiba. Between 1977 and 1985, Joan contributed regularly to the Los Angeles Times Calendar section under editor Irv Letovsky. She reported on film production and cinema politics across Poland, West Africa, Spain, and India, interviewing notable figures such as Federico Fellini, Ingrid Bergman, Jack Lemmon, George C. Scott, Raul Julia, Tony Curtis, Bruce Beresford, Roman Polanski, and Walter Matthau.
In 1985, while living in Rome and working for the Calendar section, Joan met Oleg Vidov, dubbed the Robert Redford of Russia, who had come to Italy to defect from the USSR. After the US government granted Oleg political asylum, Joan moved with him to Los Angeles. They married several years later. In Los Angeles, Joan became vice president of US Operations for Carthago Films, producers of Franco Zeffirelli's La Traviata, and later served as Chief Operating Officer of Just Betzer Films, which produced the Academy Award-winning Best Foreign Film Babette's Feast.
In 1988, Joan and Oleg founded Films by Jove Inc., a California-based film production and distribution company. In 1992, the company acquired worldwide rights (excluding the former USSR) to nearly 1,200 award-winning animated films from Moscow's Soyuzmultfilm Studio. Films by Jove funded digital restoration and marketing of over 40 hours of animation produced by Soyuzmultfilm between 1936 and 1991. Joan served as Executive Producer alongside Oleg on projects including The Animated Classic Showcase, Mikhail Baryshnikov's Stories from My Childhood, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, Masters of Russian Animation, and The Adventures of Cheburashka and Friends. She also produced, wrote, directed, and narrated Animated Soviet Propaganda. Additionally, she co-authored Mikhail Baryshnikov's Stories from My Childhood with Oleg Vidov and Mikhail Baryshnikov, published by Harry N. Abrams in New York.
Joan successfully defended Films by Jove’s licensing agreement with Soyuzmultfilm Studios and the studio’s copyright in courts in France and the United States against state-supported Russian piracy until 2007, when a Russian oligarch purchased the rights to the animation library.
