David Weissman (documentary filmmaker)

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David Weissman is a filmmaker, producer and director. [1] His works include the Emmy-nominated We Were Here documentary [2] and The Cockettes , and he is also the director of short films. [3] Both films were nominated for Independent Spirit Awards in the Best Documentary category.

Contents

Early life

Weissman was raised in Los Angeles [2] and went to University High School. After moving to San Francisco in 1976, [4] he worked in restaurants, was politically active, [2] and took film classes at City College of San Francisco. [5] He also worked as a legislative aide to San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt, [6] who served after the assassination of Harvey Milk. [2]

Career

Weissman began filmmaking as a student at the City College of San Francisco in the early 1980s. Beginning in the mid-1980s, he began producing short films. [7] In 1990, he was the first recipient of the Sundance Institute Mark Silverman Fellowship for New Producers, which included an internship on the Joel and Ethan Coen film Barton Fink. [8] He later worked as assistant cameraperson on the Oscar-winning documentary film In the Shadow of the Stars and as well as Terry Zwigoff's Crumb. [9]

In the 1990s, Weissman produced a series of public service announcements that focused on the emotional and psychological toll facing HIV-negative gay men during the AIDS epidemic in the United States. [8] He produced and co-directed the 2002 documentary The Cockettes , [1] [2] which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. [5] In 2008, he reconnected with Bill Weber, his filmmaking partner for The Cockettes , to film interviews that became the basis for the film We Were Here, [1] released in 2011 at the Sundance Film Festival [5] and in 2012 as a PBS Independent Lens documentary. [10]

In 2014, he began working on a documentary interview series, Conversations with Gay Elders , in which he works in partnership with gay men in their 20s and 30s as editors to profile gay men in their 70s and 80s. [11] [12] The first interview in the series was released in 2017. [13] [2] Six interviews have so far been released. [14]

In 2007, Weissman co-founded QDoc, a queer documentary film festival in Portland, Oregon. [15]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 McKinley, Jesse (2 September 2011). "One City's Plague Years, in Small Details". The New York Times . Retrieved 14 May 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Miller, Robert (11 June 2018). "Bringing gay elders' stories alive for the next generation". The Jewish News of Northern California . Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  3. ↑ "We Were Here". PBS. 14 June 2012. Retrieved 14 May 2021.
  4. ↑ Smith, Nigel (December 6, 2011). "David Weissman Talks About His Harrowing AIDS Doc "We Were Here"". IndieWire . Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  5. 1 2 3 "Meet the 2011 Sundance Filmmakers - "We Were Here" Director David Weissman". IndieWire . January 20, 2011. Retrieved 9 June 2021.
  6. ↑ "Filmmaker David Weissman on "We Were Here"". San Francisco Examiner . 20 Feb 2011. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  7. ↑ "DAVID WEISSMAN: SHORTS". VisualAids.com. Retrieved 5 June 2021.
  8. 1 2 "We Were Here: The Creative Team". WeWereHereFilm.com.
  9. ↑ "David Weissman: Filmmography". IMDb.com. Retrieved 8 June 2021.
  10. ↑ "'We Were Here' Revisits San Francisco's AIDS Epidemic of Early '80s". PBS. June 14, 2012. Retrieved 9 June 2021.
  11. ↑ "Origins: Conversations with Gay Elders". DavidWeissmanFilms.com. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  12. ↑ Walker-Dack, Roger. "Conversations With Gay Elders". EdgeMediaNetwork.com. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  13. ↑ Albo, Mike (16 September 2016). "Did the Internet Make Dating Worse for Gay People". VICE. Retrieved 5 June 2021.
  14. ↑ "Conversations With Gay Elders". DavidWeissmanFilms.com. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  15. ↑ Baer, April. "QDoc: Portland Festival Marks 10 Years Of Queer Cinema". Oregon Public Broadcasting. Retrieved 3 May 2021.


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