Doug Pray is an American documentary film director, producer, editor, and cinematographer who often explores unique subcultures in his films.
In January, 2024, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) released a 6-part series, “The Power of Film”[1] featuring Pray’s former teacher and mentor, UCLA Professor Howard Suber. The series, which is also streamed on Max’s TCM Hub, explores the inner workings of America’s most popular and memorable films. Pray served as executive producer, supervising editor, and writer.
Pray’s prior work as director includes Love, Lizzo, a documentary film released by HBO Max on November 24, 2022, about the singer, rapper, and flute player, her rise to fame, and her journey toward self-acceptance, as well as two art-related films: Levitated Mass (2013) [2], a film about the creation of Michael Heizer's massive sculpture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Emmy Award-winning Art & Copy, a film about advertising and creativity that premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, which was distributed by PBS.
Pray also directed Surfwise (2008), a portrait of the nomadic, 11-member Doc Paskowitz family (often referred to as the "first family of surfing"); Big Rig (2008), a documentary about truck drivers; Infamy (2005), a documentary about graffiti culture; Red Diaper Baby (2004), a solo-performance film starring Josh Kornbluth; Scratch (2001), a documentary about turntablism and DJ culture; and his first feature, Hype! (1996), a documentary about the explosion and exploitation of the Seattlegrunge scene of the early 1990s. Hype! and Scratch both premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (1996 and 2001), and are often ranked among the best music docs of all time[3][4].
From 2014 to 2017, Pray was executive producer, writer, and editor of the four-part HBO docuseries The Defiant Ones, directed by Allen Hughes, which chronicles the legendary careers and partnership of music producers Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. It premiered in the U.S. on July 9, 2017, and was nominated for 5 Emmy Awards, won Best Limited Series at the International Documentary Association (IDA) Awards, and won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Music Film.
Pray’s work with Allen Hughes led to his being asked in 2023 to help executive produce the three-part Netflix series about Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold. Prior to that, Pray executive produced the first season of the AppleTV+ series Home, for which he directed two episodes, as well as the Dave Grohl series From Cradle to Stage (Paramount+).
In addition to his documentary and series work, Pray has directed a number of nonfiction-style commercials and commissioned short films for such brands as Guinness, Adidas, Toyota, and Doc Martins. In 2006, he won an Emmy Award for an advocacy campaign for HIV/AIDS awareness.
Jeffrey Leib Nettler Zimbalist is an American filmmaker. He has been Academy Award shortlisted, has won a Peabody, a DuPont, and 3 Emmy Awards, with 16 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.
Bruce Kennedy is an American television producer, screenwriter, and director. He has won a News & Documentary Emmy Award and been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.
John Francis Carluccio is an American filmmaker, artist, and inventor. Carluccio is a two-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker who is best known for documenting obscure pockets of urban society and the creative process.
Amir Bar-Lev is noted for his work in directing documentary films. His debut, Fighter (2000) (director), was named one of the top documentaries of the year by Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and The Village Voice. Fighter won six international festival awards and was called “brilliant,” by The New Yorker, “enthralling” by the New York Times, and “one of the best documentaries of this year or any other” by Rolling Stone.
Big Rig is a 2007 documentary film by Doug Pray about long-haul truck drivers. The film consists of a series of interviews with different drivers, focusing on both their personal life stories and also the life and culture of truck drivers in the United States.
Teddy Leifer is a British film and television producer. He founded Rise Films in 2006, a London-based production company, and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2023.
Jim Dziura is an American film director, cinematographer, and editor. His work often involves heavily music-related themes and his subjects are often marginalized members of society. His work includes the feature-documentary Whiskey on a Sunday (2006) about the rock band Flogging Molly for which Jim was awarded a Platinum disc from the RIAA, the short documentary film Steel Don't Bend (2007) about modern-day hobos, the short documentary film That's Life (2007) about punk rock icon Duane Peters, the 10-episode Road to the Throwdown series (2008) about the rock band The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and the feature-length documentary Number One with a Bullet (2008) produced by QD3 and starring Ice Cube, KRS-One, Young Buck, B-Real, Obie Trice, Jerry Heller, and Damon Dash. The film was the opening night film at the 2008 Hollywood Film Festival and additionally screened at 2009 South by Southwest Film Festival. In 2001, Jim directed a feature-length documentary about Swedish musician Moneybrother for Red Bull.
Eddie Schmidt is an American director, showrunner, producer, writer, commentator and satirist. He is perhaps best known for producing several feature documentaries that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, including Valentine Road (2013), This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006), and Twist of Faith (2005), and for directing and showrunning television projects including Ugly Delicious (2018), Chelsea Does (2016), The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey (2016), and Good One: A Show About Jokes (2024).
Andrew Rossi is an American filmmaker, known for directing and writing The Andy Warhol Diaries (2022).
Tony Gerber is an American filmmaker and the co-founder of Market Road Films, an independent production company.
Mike Lerner is a film director and producer. He has directed Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (2013), and Klarsfeld (2022). He has produced multiple documentary films and series including Hell and Back Again (2011), Rafea: Solar Mama (2012), The Square (2013), The Departure (2017), The Great Hack (2019), The Kleptocrats (2018), The Vow (2020–22), The Meaning of Hitler (2020), F*ck this Job (2021), Flight/Risk (2022), and Defiant (2023).
Levitated Mass is a 2012 large-scale public art sculpture by Michael Heizer at Resnick North Lawn at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The installation consists of a 340-ton boulder sculpture placed above a 456-foot viewing pathway to accommodate 360-degree viewing. The nature, expense and scale of the installation attracted discussion within the public art world, and its notable 106-mile transit from the Jurupa Valley Quarry in Riverside County was widely covered by the media.
Jacob Kornbluth is the award-winning director of documentaries Inequality for All, and Saving Capitalism, and feature films Haiku Tunnel, Love & Taxes, and The Best Thief in the World. He was a producer on the TV show Years of Living Dangerously. His work on that show won a primetime Emmy. Jacob has had 3 films premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
Lindsey Dryden is a British film director, producer and writer.
The Defiant Ones is a four-part American television documentary series, directed by Allen Hughes, that aired on HBO from July 9 to July 12, 2017. It focuses on the careers of and partnership between Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, co-founders of Beats Electronics.
Karim Amer is an Egyptian-American film producer and director. He worked on The Square (2013) and The Great Hack (2019); the former was the first Egyptian film to earn an Academy Award nomination and went on to win three Emmy Awards, while the latter got nominated for an Emmy and a BAFTA Award. In 2020, he produced and directed The Vow, an HBO documentary series about the self-improvement group, NXIVM. In 2022, he produced and directed Flight/Risk for Amazon Studios, revolving around whistleblowers at Boeing.
Diane Hope Weyermann was an American film producer who was the chief content officer of Participant Media, a film and television production company.
Kerstin Emhoff is an American film producer and the co-founder and CEO of the commercial production company Prettybird and creative studio Ventureland. She is a member of the DGA, PGA, and Television Academy.
Bonni Cohen is an American documentary film producer and director. She is the co-founder of Actual Films and has produced and directed an array of award-winning films. Most recently, she produced the Oscar-nominated film Lead Me Home, which premiered at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival and is a Netflix Original. She also recently co-directed Athlete A, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Documentary and received four nominations from the Critics’ Choice Awards. She is the co-founder of Actual Films, the production company of the documentaries An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Audrie & Daisy, 3.5 Minutes, The Island President, Lost Boys of Sudan and The Rape of Europa. Cohen is the co-founder of the Catapult Film Fund.
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