John Block (filmmaker)

Last updated
John Block
Born
John Simeon Block

1951
Occupation filmmaker

John Simeon Block is an American documentary filmmaker.

Contents

Career

John Block, a native of Chicago, is a 1972 graduate from Northwestern University. In 1977 he obtained a Master of Fine Arts in filmmaking from the New York University. From 1980 until 1983 he worked for WCBS and then came to NBC in 1983. Initially he was a "Special Segment" producer for the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. In 1990 he became a producer/writer for Real Life with Jane Pauley and in 1991 a producer/writer for the Brokaw Reports. From 1992 until 2009 Block was a producer/writer for Dateline NBC. [1]

Since 2010, Block has been an independent producer and filmmaker.

Block's subjects cover a wide spectrum of social issues and problems including poverty, homelessness, medical issues, broken families, drugs, crime, and education. He has also made videos for educational and medical support programs.

Personal life

Block resides in Montclair, New Jersey with his wife Maria. They have three children. [2]

Awards

Selected filmography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Davis Guggenheim</span> American film and television director and producer

Philip Davis Guggenheim is an American screenwriter, director, and producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Alter</span> American journalist, author, documentary filmmaker, and television producer

Jonathan H. Alter is a liberal American journalist, best-selling author, Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and television producer who was a columnist and senior editor for Newsweek magazine from 1983 until 2011. Alter has written several books about American presidents, most recently His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life, published in 2020, the first independent biography of Carter. His newest book, American Reckoning: Inside Trump's Trial—and My Own, is due to be published on October 22, 2024.

<i>I Have Tourettes but Tourettes Doesnt Have Me</i> 2005 American TV series or program

I Have Tourette's but Tourette's Doesn't Have Me is a 2005 documentary film featuring children between the ages of six and thirteen with Tourette syndrome. The film examines the lives of more than a dozen children who have Tourette's, and explores the challenges they face.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Alpert</span> American journalist and documentary filmmaker

Jon Alpert is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanley Nelson Jr.</span> American documentary filmmaker

Stanley Earl Nelson Jr. is an American documentary filmmaker and a MacArthur Fellow known as a director, writer and producer of documentaries examining African-American history and experiences. He is a recipient of the 2013 National Humanities Medal from President Obama. He has won three Primetime Emmy Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dennis Goulden</span> Canadian documentarian

Dennis Goulden is a documentarian who has worked as a cameraman, editor, writer, executive producer, producer and director on hundreds of films, and has received over a dozen Emmys and hundreds of other awards for his many years of work.

Oren Rudavsky is an American documentary filmmaker specializing in work about individuals and communities outside the mainstream. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1979. Oren Rudavsky is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Rudavsky is currently producing the NEH funded American Masters documentary: Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People. He is also working on a documentary for a program called Witness Theater, which will chronicle the relationships formed between high school students and Holocaust survivors, culminating with a dramatization of the lives of the survivors. His films Colliding Dreams co-directed with Joseph Dorman, and The Ruins of Lifta co-directed with Menachem Daum, were released theatrically in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Ross Williams</span> American film director

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.

Daniel Junge is an American documentary filmmaker. On February 26, 2012, he won the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film Saving Face, which he co-directed along with Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Lisa F. Jackson is an American documentary filmmaker, known most recently for her films, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo (2007) and Sex Crimes Unit (2011), which aired on HBO in 2008 and 2011. Her work has earned awards including two Emmy awards and a Jury Prize from the Sundance Film Festival. She has screened her work and lectured at the Columbia University School of Journalism, Brandeis, Purdue, NYU, Yale, Notre Dame and Harvard University and was a visiting professor of documentary film at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sławomir Grünberg</span> Documentary producer

Sławomir Grünberg is a Polish-born naturalized American documentary producer, director and cameraman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allan Maraynes</span> American journalist

Allan Lawrence Maraynes is an American documentary filmmaker, investigative journalist, television producer, and writer. He is best known for his award-winning work on CBS's 60 Minutes, ABC's 20/20, and Dateline NBC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matt Wolf (filmmaker)</span> American film director

Matt Wolf is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and producer. His notable films include Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, Teenage, Bayard & Me,Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, and Spaceship Earth. In 2010, he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. His subjects include youth culture, artists, archives, music, and queer history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janet Tobias</span> American film director

Janet Tobias is a media executive specializing in healthcare as well as an Emmy Award-winning director, producer, and writer.

Motto Pictures is a documentary production company based in Brooklyn, New York specializing in producing and executive producing documentary features. Motto secures financing, builds distribution strategies, and creatively develops films, and has produced over 25 feature documentaries and won numerous awards.

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.

Beth Aala is a three-time award-winning American documentary filmmaker and film producer.

<i>Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists</i> 2018 film

Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists is a 2018 HBO documentary about Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, "two of the most celebrated newspapermen of the 20th century" who worked in New York City covering events of the late 20th century. The film was directed by John Block, Jonathan Alter, and Steve McCarthy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Maggio (director)</span> American documentary director, writer and producer

John Maggio is an American documentary film director, writer and producer. He is best known for his films The Perfect Weapon (HBO), Panic: The Untold Story of the 2008 Financial Crisis (HBO) and The Newspaperman (HBO) as well as his work with the PBS series American Experience and Frontline.

References

  1. New York Times: John Block
  2. John Block (February 13, 2008). "Who gets to propose the next time?". Christian Science Monitor . Retrieved November 20, 2015.
  3. Guggenheim Fellow: John Block
  4. Walter Goodman (July 24, 1995). "TELEVISION REVIEW; Those Lucky Few Youngsters Who Escape Tragic Streets". New York Times . Retrieved November 20, 2015.
  5. Robert Channick (November 8, 2011). "A different kind of documentary.Homegrown portrait of area student with Tourette syndrome on cusp of national exposure". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on January 27, 2012. Retrieved November 20, 2015.
  6. Kathleen O'Brian (June 17, 2013). "Fathers and sons explored in Montclair filmmaker's PBS documentary". NJ Advance Media, NJ.com. Retrieved November 20, 2015.
  7. Nantucket Film Festival, 2014
  8. "New Documentary The One That Got Away Examines the Life of an At-Risk-Youth Monday, September 12 at 9:30 p.m. on THIRTEEN". PR Newswire. August 31, 2016. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  9. HBO: Breslin and Hamill Deadline Artists, January 2019
  10. Montclair University press release, September 2020