Jeffrey Friedman | |
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| 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 from 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.
John Patrick Boylan is an American record producer, musician, songwriter, music publisher and A&R executive.
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.
Jeffrey Schwarz is an American Emmy Award-winning film producer, director, and editor. He is known for an extensive body of documentary work including Commitment to Life, 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.
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.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival takes place every January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
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.
Greenwich Entertainment, founded in 2017, is an independent film distribution company specializing in narrative and documentary feature films. 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 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).
Linda Feferman is an American film and television director and producer. A 1977 Guggenheim Fellow and 1978 MacDowell Fellow, she has received Grammy Award and Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and won the Special Jury Recognition For Youth Comedy award at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival as director of the 1986 feature film Seven Minutes in Heaven.
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