Charles Olivier | |
---|---|
Born | London, England, United Kingdom |
Occupation(s) | Screenwriter, Playwright, Editor |
Charles Olivier is an American film and television writer, producer, playwright, journalist and editor. His work has won several Emmys, a G. Foster Peabody award, a Thurgood Marshall Humanitarian Award for Excellence in Journalism, as well as many other accolades. He and his films have taken top awards or been nominated at the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival, and many more.
Olivier was born in London, England, growing up there, in Belgium, in France and in the United States. He attended the St. Mark's School of Texas in Dallas, Texas. In college, he was a Plan II honors student at the University of Texas at Austin, concentrating on languages and comparative politics. He later attended New York University's (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts where he studied screenwriting and film production.
While at NYU, he co-founded the New York theatre company Argo with Circle in the Square actors, working as playwright and director.
Following NYU he moved to France to work as a print journalist for Agence France Presse working the West Africa and English desk while also developing teleplays for France's TF1. He was introduced to and began working alongside theatre director Robert Wilson in France, Germany and the UK, and developing works with Herbert Grönemeyer for the Berliner Ensemble theatre.
Returning to New York, he began writing and editing for videogame developer Rockstar Games while developing a stretch of documentary work sourced from stringer pieces he had done with Associated Press and Reuters. Two main documentaries, Deadline about controversial Illinois Governor George Ryan and The Nine Lives of Marion Barry came from this period. Deadline would go on to be nominated for a Grand Jury Award at Sundance where it was purchased by Dateline. The Nine Lives of Marion Barry was acquired and televised on HBO.
He wrote and produced for PBS's Frontline and Wide Angle as well as several civil rights documentaries, notably the Emmy Award-winning series 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America .
He has also worked with friend and collaborator Ezra Edelman on numerous sports-themed documentaries for HBO including the Ghosts of Flatbush (2008), about the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York in the 1950s which won an Emmy; Magic & Bird: a Courtship of Rivals (2009) about Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and race politics in the 1980s which was nominated for an Emmy and won a Peabody Award.
In 2014, Amazon.com produced and released his audio drama, Christmas Eve, 1914, to commemorate the centennial of the World War I Christmas Truce. The piece stars actors Damon Herriman, James Scott, Xander Berkeley, Lance Guest, Cameron Daddo and Nate Jones.
In 2023, he won an Emmy for the documentary The Redeem Team along with Jon Weinbach. The feature film centered around the 2008 American Men's Olympic basketball team which comprised LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade. It was produced by Netflix, James' production company, Springhill Company and Wade's 59th and Prairie.
In 2024, Olivier was nominated for an Emmy for the series, The Jinx, Season 2, along with Andrew Jarecki and Zac Stuart-Pontier.
He and actor Owen Wilson often collaborate with writing and producing, developing news-based stories for both television and film.
He currently divides his time between Los Angeles, New York and France with his wife and two sons.
While in school at NYU, he won the Wasserman award for Best Screenwriting. He also won Arista's Clive Davis award for his film scores and music composition.
Nominated for Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004 for documentary Deadline about Governor George Ryan. A long time Republican, Ryan broke with his party and helped to renew the national debate on capital punishment when, as governor, he declared a moratorium on his state's death penalty in 2000.
Won Emmy in 2006 for Nonfiction Programming for the television series the 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America. An investigation into Civil Rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner who were murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi during 1964's Freedom Summer.
Won Emmy again in 2008 for Nonfiction Programming for the film Brooklyn Dodgers: Ghosts of Flatbush. The story of the Brooklyn Dodgers, their fans and New York in the 1950s.
In 2011, he was nominated for an Emmy for Nonfiction Programming for the film Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals as well as a nomination for the television series The Season. In 2011, he also won a George Foster Peabody award for Magic & Bird.
Won Emmy in 2023 for Best Long Form Documentary for the film The Redeem Team along with producers Jon Weinbach, Frank Marshall, Mike Tollin and Dwyane Wade.
Marc Levin is an American independent film producer and director. He is best known for his Brick City TV series, which won the 2010 Peabody award and was nominated for an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking and his dramatic feature film, Slam, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 1998. He also has received three Emmy Awards and the 1997 DuPont-Columbia Award.
Jeffrey Leib Nettler Zimbalist is an American filmmaker. He has been Academy Award shortlisted, has won a Peabody, a DuPont, 5 Emmy Awards with 17 Emmy nominations. He is the owner of film and television production company All Rise Films.
Thomas Furneaux Lennon is a documentary filmmaker. He was born in Washington, D.C., graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1968 and Yale University in 1973.
Peter Frank Davis, is an American filmmaker, author, novelist and journalist. His film Hearts and Minds, about American military action in Vietnam, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1974.
Irene Taylor is a film director and producer.
Stanley Earl Nelson Jr. is an American documentary filmmaker and a MacArthur Fellow known as a director, writer and producer of documentaries examining African-American history and experiences. He is a recipient of the 2013 National Humanities Medal from President Obama. He has won three Primetime Emmy Awards.
Joe Bini is an American film editor.
Chris Smith is an American filmmaker. He directed American Movie, which was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.
Elizabeth Freya Garbus is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable documentaries Garbus has made are The Farm: Angola, USA,Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,Bobby Fischer Against the World,Love, Marilyn,What Happened, Miss Simone?, and Becoming Cousteau. She is co-founder and co-director of the New York City-based documentary film production company Story Syndicate.
Bill Guttentag is an American dramatic and documentary film writer-producer-director. His films have premiered at the Sundance, Cannes, Telluride and Tribeca film festivals, and he has won two Academy Awards.
Ezra Benjamin Edelman is an American documentary producer and director. He won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming for directing O.J.: Made in America (2016). He has also directed a documentary on the musician Prince that remains unreleased.
Kirsten Johnson is an American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer. She is mostly known for her camera work on several well-known feature-length documentaries such as Citizenfour and The Oath. In 2016, she released Cameraperson, a film which consists of various pieces of footage from her decades of work all over the world as a documentary cinematographer. Directed by Johnson herself, Cameraperson went on to be praised for its handling of themes about documentary ethics interwoven with Johnson's personal reflection on her experiences.
Steven Ascher is an American independent director, producer and writer. He was nominated for an Academy Award and has received the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival among many other awards. His book The Filmmaker’s Handbook is a bestselling text.
David France is an American investigative reporter, non-fiction author, and filmmaker. He is a former Newsweek senior editor, and has published in New York magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and others. France, who is gay, is best known for his investigative journalism on LGBTQ topics.
What Happened, Miss Simone? is a 2015 American biographical documentary film about Nina Simone directed by Liz Garbus. The film opened the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The screening was followed by a tribute performance by John Legend. The film was released by Netflix on June 26, 2015. It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 88th Academy Awards.
Feras Fayyad is a Syrian film director, producer, and writer. Fayyad best known for his 2017 documentary Last Men in Aleppo and his 2019 documentary The Cave, both films earned him critical acclaim and numerous awards and nominations including two Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, making him the first Syrian director to be nominated for an Oscar. Fayyad also won an Emmy award for Best Current Affairs Documentary, was nominated for a creative Emmy for best writing and directing, and has received two George Foster Peabody awards and a nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement from the Directors Guild of America for his movie The Cave.
Aaron I. Butler is an American film and television editor and producer.
Sabrina Schmidt Gordon is an American documentary filmmaker. She is known for producing and editing films on cultural and social issues. In 2018, she was invited to become a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
Todd Douglas Miller is an American filmmaker known for directing the award-winning films Dinosaur 13 and Apollo 11.
Jon Weinbach is an American film and television writer and producer. He is currently President of Skydance Sports and was previously the executive producer and executive vice president for Mandalay Sports Media, a media and production company that focuses on sports entertainment programming.
Dargis, Manohla. "Movies: About Charles Olivier "
Edelstein, Bill. "the Ghosts of Flatbush"
Lowry, Brian. "Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals"
Cockrell, Eddie. "Nine Lives of Marion Barry"