Jeffrey Friedman | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | August 24, 1951 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Filmmaker |
| Years active | 1972–present |
Jeffrey Friedman (born August 24, 1951) is an American filmmaker. In 2021, he and Rob Epstein won a Grammy Award for their work on the documentary film Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice [1]
Jeffrey Friedman grew up in New York City, where his mother was an actor and his father taught undergraduate English literature and edited and published a small literary magazine. He began studying acting when he was nine, and at 12, he acted professionally in two off-Broadway productions. He played Emil in Emil and the Detectives and a schoolboy on the first day of integration in Little Rock, Arkansas in Black Monday by Reginald Rose.
Friedman began his film training by apprenticing in the editing rooms of films such as Marjoe (Academy Award, Documentary Feature, 1972) and William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973). Other early credits include the pole-vault segment directed by Arthur Penn and edited by Dede Allen for Visions of Eight (1973) about the 1972 Munich Olympics, and Raging Bull (Academy Award, Film Editing, 1980), edited by Thelma Schoonmaker and directed by Martin Scorsese.
Friedman has been making films with Rob Epstein since 1987 when they formed the production company Telling Pictures in San Francisco, California. Friedman and Epstein's first film together was Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt , inspired by the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Common Threads recounts the first decade of AIDS in America through stories of five individuals featured in the Quilt. [2] The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Common Threads in 1990 as well as a Peabody Award. [3] Common Threads was preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in conjunction with Milestone Films and Outfest, in 2019. [4]
Their film The Celluloid Closet , based on the book by film historian Vito Russo, depicts a 100-year history of homosexual characters in Hollywood movies. Narrated by Lily Tomlin, The Celluloid Closet had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and was featured at the Toronto, New York, and Sundance Film Festivals (at which it received the juried Freedom of Expression Award) and at numerous international festivals, including Berlin, Tokyo, and Sydney. It received a Peabody Award and a duPont-Columbia journalism award alongside a News & Documentary Emmy for directing. [5] [6]
In 2000, they directed and produced Paragraph 175 , a film that explores the untold history of homosexuals during the Nazi regime in Europe. Narrated by Rupert Everett and filmed in Germany, France and Spain, it had its U.S. premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2000, where it was awarded the documentary Grand Jury Prize for directing, followed by a European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February, where it won a FIPRESCI award (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique). [7] [8]
They wrote, directed, and co-produced Howl (2010), starring James Franco as the poet Allen Ginsberg. Howl premiered on opening night at the Sundance Film Festival, followed by the Berlin and London International Film Festivals. Howl received a 2011 Freedom of Expression Award from the National Board of Review. [9]
In 2013, the duo directed Lovelace, starring Amanda Seyfried and Peter Sarsgaard, and it premiered at the Sundance and Berlin International Film Festival. [10] In 2019, their documentary short End Game was nominated from an Academy Award, and two additional documentaries were released, first with the State of Pride premiering at South by Southwest [11] followed by Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice premiering the Tribeca Film Festival. [12] Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice won a Grammy Award for Best Musical Film in 2021. [13]
In 2023, they released the concert film Taylor Mac's A 24-Decade History of Popular Music . The film premiered at Tribeca Festival, and was released on HBO and Max. [14]
All films jointly with Rob Epstein:
William Couturié is a film director and producer, best known for his work in the field of documentary film.
The Celluloid Closet is a 1996 American documentary film directed and co-written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and executive produced by Howard Rosenman. The film is based on Vito Russo's 1981 book The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, and on lecture and film clip presentations he gave from 1972 to 1982. Russo had researched the history of how motion pictures, especially Hollywood films, had portrayed gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters.
Vito Russo was an American LGBT activist, film historian, and author. He is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet, described in The New York Times as "an essential reference book" on homosexuality in the US film industry. In 1985, he co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a media watchdog organization that strives to end anti-LGBT rhetoric, and advocates for LGBT inclusion in popular media.
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt is a 1989 American documentary film that tells the story of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman with a musical score written and performed by Bobby McFerrin, the film focuses on several people who are represented by panels in the Quilt, combining personal reminiscences with archive footage of the subjects, along with footage of various politicians, health professionals and other people with AIDS. Each section of the film is punctuated with statistics detailing the number of Americans diagnosed with and dead of AIDS through the early years of the epidemic. The film ends with the first display of the complete Quilt at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. during the 1987 Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
Jeffrey Schwarz is an American Emmy Award-winning film producer, director, and editor. He is known for an extensive body of documentary work including Boulevard! A Hollywood Story, The Fabulous Allan Carr, Tab Hunter Confidential, I Am Divine, Vito, Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon and Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story.
"Somewhere Out There" is a song released by MCA Records and recorded by American singers Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram for the soundtrack of the animated feature film An American Tail (1986). The song was written by James Horner, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil, and produced by Peter Asher and Steve Tyrell. It reached number eight in the United Kingdom, number six in Ireland, and number two in both the United States and Canada.
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.
Robert P. Epstein, is an American director, producer, writer, and editor. He has won two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature, for the films The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt.
Jawal Nga is a film producer and writer based in New York City.
Barry Michael Avrich is a Canadian film director, film producer, author, marketing executive, and arts philanthropist. Avrich's film career has included critically acclaimed films about the entertainment business including The Last Mogul about film producer Lew Wasserman (2005), Glitter Palace about the Motion Picture Country Home (2005), and Guilty Pleasure about the Vanity Fair columnist and author Dominick Dunne (2004). In addition, Avrich produced the Gemini-nominated television special Caesar and Cleopatra (2009) with Christopher Plummer. Avrich also produced Canada's Sports Hall of Fame Awards (2015) as well as the Canadian Screen Awards (2015-2017) and The Scotiabank Giller Prize (2015-Current).
Roger Ross Williams is an American director, producer and writer and the first African American director to win an Academy Award (Oscar), with his short film Music by Prudence; this film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film in 2009.
Howard Rosenman, also known as Zvi Howard Rosenman, is an American producer and motion picture executive. He specializes in producing romantic comedy films and documentary films. Some of his most popular productions include Father of the Bride (1991) starring Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) and The Family Man (2000) starring Nicolas Cage. Rosenman's documentary film Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt won the Peabody Award and the 1990 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; his film The Celluloid Closet also won the Peabody Award.
Kahane Cooperman is an American documentary filmmaker and television director and producer, whose 2016 documentary Joe's Violin was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.
Ryan White is a documentary producer and director best known for his Netflix documentary film Pamela, a Love Story, Amazon Prime's Good Night Oppy, which won five Critics Choice Awards including Best Documentary and Best Director, and his Emmy-nominated Netflix series The Keepers. White's previous films include the HBO movie The Case Against 8, which won Sundance's Directing Award and was nominated for two Emmys, the documentary film Ask Dr. Ruth, and Coded, which was shortlisted for the Academy Award.
Greenwich Entertainment, founded in 2017, is an independent film distribution company specializing in distinctive, theatrical-quality narrative and documentary features. The company released Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi’s Academy Award-Winning Documentary Free Solo, which grossed over $17M at the US box office, Andrew Slater’s Echo in the Canyon, which opened to the highest per-theater-average of any documentary in 2019, and Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice by Academy Award-winning directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice is a 2019 documentary film about American singer Linda Ronstadt. It was directed by Oscar-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. It features interviews with many of Ronstadt's friends and fellow artists.
Anne Sundberg is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer, most known for her documentarian work. She works alongside Ricki Stern. She is most known for The Trials of Darryl Hunt (2006), The Devil Came on Horseback (2007), The End of America (2007), Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010), and Surviving Jeffrey Epstein (2020).
Ricki Stern is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, most known for her documentarian work, and author. She works alongside Anne Sundberg. She is most known for The Trials of Darryl Hunt (2006), The Devil Came on Horseback (2007), The End of America (2007), Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010), Surviving Jeffrey Epstein (2020), and Surviving Death (2021).
Sara Dosa is an American documentary director and producer. Dosa wrote, produced and directed the 2022 documentary film Fire of Love, which was nominated for a BAFTA and an Academy Award. Dosa won the 2023 DGA Award for Outstanding Directing for the film. Her other works have received Emmy and Independent Spirit Award, as well a Peabody win.
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