An American Family is an American television documentary series that followed the life of a California family in the early 1970s. Widely referred to as the first example of an American reality TV show, the series drew millions of weekly viewers, who were drawn to a story that seemed to shatter the rosy façade of upper-middle-class suburbia. It also became a lightning rod for discussion about the precarious state of the American family in the early 1970s. An American Family ranks #32 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time list.
Alanson Russell "Lance" Loud was an American television personality, magazine columnist, and new wave rock-n-roll performer. Loud is best known for his 1973 appearance in An American Family, a pioneer reality television series that featured his coming out, leading to his status as an icon in the gay community.
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth.
Diane Lane is an American actress. She made her motion picture debut in George Roy Hill's 1979 film A Little Romance. Later she acted in the movie Streets of Fire (1984). Lane returned to acting to appear in The Big Town, Lady Beware and western miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989), for which she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Lane earned further recognition for her role in A Walk on the Moon (1999), for which she was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. This was followed by several film roles of varying degrees of success such as My Dog Skip, The Perfect Storm, The Glass House, and Hardball.
David Henry Chase is an American writer, producer, and director. He is best known for being the creator, head writer, and executive producer of the HBO drama The Sopranos, which aired for six seasons between 1999 and 2007. Chase has also produced and written for shows such as The Rockford Files, I'll Fly Away, and Northern Exposure. He created the original series Almost Grown which aired for 10 episodes in 1988 and 1989. He has won seven Emmy Awards. Chase's film debut came in 2012 with Not Fade Away, followed by The Many Saints of Newark (2021), a prequel film to the TV series The Sopranos.
Philip Davis Guggenheim is an American screenwriter, director, and producer.
Steve James is an American film producer and director of several documentaries, including Hoop Dreams (1994), Stevie (2002), The Interrupters (2011), Life Itself (2014), and Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016).
Kirby Bryan Dick is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best known for directing documentary films. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary Feature for directing Twist of Faith (2005) and The Invisible War (2012). He has also received numerous awards from film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival.
"Soprano Home Movies" is the 78th episode of the HBO television drama series The Sopranos and the 13th episode of the sixth season. It served as the midseason premiere to the second part of Season 6, which HBO broadcast in two parts.
Grey Gardens is a 2009 American biographical drama television film about the lives of Edith Bouvier "Little Edie" Beale, played by Drew Barrymore, and her mother Edith Ewing "Big Edie" Bouvier, played by Jessica Lange. Co-stars include Jeanne Tripplehorn as Jacqueline Kennedy, Little Edie's cousin, and Ken Howard as Phelan Beale, Little Edie's father. The film, directed by Michael Sucsy and co-written by Sucsy and Patricia Rozema, flashes back and forth between various events and dates ranging from Little Edie as a young débutante in 1936 moving with her mother to their Grey Gardens estate through the filming and premiere of the actual 1975 documentary Grey Gardens.
Too Big to Fail is a 2011 American biographical drama television film directed by Curtis Hanson and written by Peter Gould, based on Andrew Ross Sorkin's 2009 non-fiction book Too Big to Fail. The film aired on HBO on May 23, 2011. It received 11 nominations at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards; Paul Giamatti's portrayal of Ben Bernanke earned him the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie at the 18th Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Hemingway & Gellhorn is a 2012 American biographical drama television film directed by Philip Kaufman and written by Jerry Stahl and Barbara Turner, about the lives of journalist Martha Gellhorn and her husband, writer Ernest Hemingway. The film premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and aired on HBO on May 28, 2012.
Jennifer Fox is an American film producer, director, cinematographer, and writer as well as president of A Luminous Mind Film Productions. She won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for her first feature documentary, Beirut: The Last Home Movie. Her 2010 documentary My Reincarnation had its premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2010, where it won a Top 20 Audience Award.
Mildred Pierce is an American period drama television miniseries created by Todd Haynes for HBO. Adapted from James M. Cain's 1941 novel of the same name, It is about the titular heroine, a divorcée during the Great Depression struggling to establish a restaurant business while yearning for the respect of her narcissistic daughter. The miniseries also features Guy Pearce and Melissa Leo. It is the second adaptation of the novel, after the 1945 film noir produced by Warner Bros. and starring Joan Crawford. Carter Burwell wrote the original score for the miniseries.
American actor and filmmaker Tim Robbins started his acting career in 1982 with a few episodes on the medical drama series St. Elsewhere. His film debut was in the 1984 action film Toy Soldiers. He had minor roles in Fraternity Vacation (1985) and Top Gun (1986) before co-starring in the 1988 romantic comedy sports film Bull Durham with Kevin Costner. He went on to star in the films Erik the Viking with Mickey Rooney (1989), Jacob's Ladder with Elizabeth Peña (1990), Cadillac Man with Robin Williams, and The Player with Greta Scacchi (1992). In 1994, he portrayed Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption with Morgan Freeman. To prepare for his role, he spent time in solitary confinement. He also appeared in the 2000 comedy film High Fidelity with John Cusack. In 2003, he co-starred in Clint Eastwood's neo-noir crime drama film Mystic River with Sean Penn. For that role, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture.
The Night Of is a 2016 American eight-part crime drama miniseries based on the first season of Criminal Justice, a 2008 British series. The miniseries was written by Richard Price and Steven Zaillian, and directed by Zaillian and James Marsh. Broadcast on HBO, The Night Of premiered on July 10, 2016 to critical acclaim. The first episode premiered on June 24, 2016, via HBO's on-demand services. The Night Of received 13 Emmy nominations, winning five, including Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series for Riz Ahmed.
The 16th Art Directors Guild Awards, which were given on February 4, 2012, honored the best production designers of 2011.
Navalny is a 2022 American documentary film directed by Daniel Roher. The film revolves around Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and events related to his poisoning. It was produced by HBO Max and CNN Films. The film premiered on January 25, 2022 at the Sundance Film Festival, where it received critical and audience acclaim and won the Audience Award in the US Documentary competition and the Festival Favorite Award. It also won the Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards, won the award for Best Political Documentary at the 7th Critics' Choice Documentary Awards and picked up best documentary at the 76th BAFTA awards ceremony.
