Ben Shapiro | |
|---|---|
 Ben Shapiro in 2013 | |
| Born | 1959 |
| Occupation(s) | director cinematographer public radio producer |
| Notable work | Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters Radio Diaries |
Benjamin Shapiro (born 1959 [1] ) is an American documentary director, cinematographer, and independent public radio producer.
Shapiro is co-director/producer (with Sam Pollard) and cinematographer of the documentary Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, which explores the life and career of the master drummer, bandleader, activist across seven decades. The film premiered at the 2023 South by Southwest Film Festival, and had its broadcast premiere on the PBS series American Masters. [2] [3]
Shapiro directed and was cinematographer of the documentary Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters , which follows the photographer over a decade as he creates his images. [4] Brief Encounters premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival and is screening theatrically at festivals and on television internationally. The New York Times rated the film as a "Critics' Pick," and Variety described it as "must see." [5] [6] [7]
Shapiro's work as a cinematographer and producer includes projects for PBS (American Masters, PBS Arts, EGG), National Geographic, The Sundance Channel, and independent filmmakers including Katy Chevigny, Barbara Kopple, the feature "Paul Goodman Changed my Life," among others.
Shapiro's radio stories have been featured on such programs as NPR's All Things Considered and Morning Edition. He has been a member of Radio Diaries since the series began in 1996, as an editor, mix engineer, and producer. [8] Shapiro has collaborated on projects with many producers including American Radioworks, The Kitchen Sisters, WNYC and the BBC.
For his work, Shapiro has received an Emmy award, [9] two Peabody Awards, [10] [11] and two Dupont Awards. [12]
Shapiro has been published in the Journal of Popular Film and Television and Transom.org. [13] [14] He has taught at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, the New School University Graduate Media Studies program, and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
The George Foster Peabody Awards program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor what are described as the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and online media. The awards were conceived by the National Association of Broadcasters in 1938 as the radio industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes. Programs are recognized in seven categories: news, entertainment, documentaries, children's programming, education, interactive programming, and public service. Peabody Award winners include radio and television stations, networks, online media, producing organizations, and individuals from around the world.
Kenneth Lauren Burns is an American filmmaker known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or the National Endowment for the Humanities and distributed by PBS.
Maxwell Lemuel Roach was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history. He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, and Booker Little. He also played with his daughter Maxine Roach, Grammy nominated Violist. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992.
Frontline is an investigative documentary program distributed by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. Episodes are produced at WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts. The series has covered a variety of domestic and international issues, including terrorism, elections, environmental disasters, and other sociopolitical issues. Since its debut in 1983, Frontline has aired in the U.S. for 39 seasons, and has won critical acclaim and awards in broadcast journalism. It has produced over 750 documentaries from both in-house and independent filmmakers, 200 of which are available online.
The Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award honors excellence in broadcast and digital journalism in the public service and is considered one of the most prestigious awards in journalism. The awards were established in 1942 and administered until 1967 by Washington and Lee University's O. W. Riegel, Curator and Head of the Department of Journalism and Communications. Since 1968 they have been administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, and are considered by some to be the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, another program administered by Columbia University.
Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer who makes large-scale, cinematic, psychologically-charged prints of staged scenes set in suburban landscapes and interiors. He directs a large production and lighting crew to construct his images.
László KovácsASC was a Hungarian-American cinematographer who was influential in the development of American New Wave films in the 1970s, collaborating with directors including Peter Bogdanovich, Richard Rush, Dennis Hopper, Norman Jewison, and Martin Scorsese. Known for his work on Easy Rider (1969) and Five Easy Pieces (1970), Kovács was the recipient of numerous awards, including three Lifetime Achievement Awards. He was an active member of the American Society of Cinematographers and was a member of the organization's board of directors.
ITVS is a service in the United States which funds and presents documentaries on public television through distribution by PBS and American Public Television, new media projects on the Internet, and the weekly series Independent Lens on PBS. Aside from Independent Lens, ITVS funded and produced films for more than 40 television hours per year on the PBS series POV, Frontline, American Masters and American Experience. Some ITVS programs are produced along with organizations like Latino Public Broadcasting and KQED.
Theodore Michael Shapiro is an American composer best known for his film scores.
Thomas Furneaux Lennon is a documentary filmmaker. He was born in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1968.
Martyn Burke is a Canadian director, novelist and screenwriter from Toronto, Ontario.
Jon Alpert is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films.
Lionel Friedberg is a documentary film director, producer and writer who has written or produced films for, among others, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, PBS, the History Channel and National Geographic. He has 18 credits as Director of Photography on feature motion pictures, and has worked all over the world on both dramatic and nonfiction productions.
Renee Tajima-Peña is an American filmmaker whose work focuses on immigrant communities, race, gender and social justice. Her directing and producing credits include the documentaries Who Killed Vincent Chin?, No Más Bebés, My America...or Honk if You Love Buddha, Calavera Highway, Skate Manzanar, Labor Women and the 5-part docuseries Asian Americans.
Martin Smith is a producer, writer, director and correspondent. Smith has produced dozens of nationally broadcast documentaries for CBS News, ABC News and PBS Frontline. His films range in topic from war in the Middle East to the 2008 financial crisis. He is a member of the Overseas Press Club and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters is a 2012 American documentary film directed, produced, and shot by Ben Shapiro. It premiered March 10, 2012 at the South by Southwest Film Festival and is distributed by Zeitgeist Films.
Richard Rowley is a documentary filmmaker. His films and TV shows have received three Emmy awards, an Oscar nomination, and other awards and nominations, as well as recognition at film festivals around the world.
William Brangham (1968) is an American journalist who is currently a correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. Before, he worked as a producer for several other television programs, mostly for PBS. Awards he has won for his journalism include a Peabody Award in 2015 and News & Documentary Emmy Awards in 2017, 2019, and 2020.
Samuel D. Pollard is an American film director, editor, producer, and screenwriter. His films have garnered numerous awards such as Peabodys, Emmys, and an Academy Award nomination. In 2020, the International Documentary Association gave him a career achievement award. Spike Lee, whose films Pollard has edited and produced, described him as being "a master filmmaker." Henry Louis Gates Jr. characterizes his work in this way: "When I think about his documentaries, they add up to a corpus — a way of telling African-American history in its various dimensions."
Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes is a 2023 documentary film about the drummer, bandleader, and activist Max Roach. The film was directed by Sam Pollard and Ben Shapiro, edited by Russell Greene, with cinematography by Shapiro. The film premiered at the 2023 South by Southwest Film Festival.