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Tom Neff | |
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 Neff at Sage Hill School | |
| Born | 1953 (age 70–71) |
| Occupation(s) | Business executive, film producer, film director, professor |
Thomas Linden Neff (born 1953)-, known as Tom Neff, is an American film executive, director and producer, born in Chicago, Illinois. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Neff received his Bachelor of Arts from Lawrence University with a major in English. In 1981, he completed a Master of Fine Arts at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.
Neff is the founder and former CEO of DOC: The Documentary Channel, the first channel in the United States to show documentaries on a full-time basis. The Documentary Channel, created in 1998, was shown on the DISH Network, Channel 197 and DirecTV, Channel 263. Neff is also a documentary film producer and director. [1]
Neff's films have won several national and international awards, including an Academy Award nomination and an Emmy win. [2] In 1983 he began Tennessee's first feature film production company, Polaris Productions, and wrote and directed the feature film Running Mates (1985) distributed worldwide by New World Pictures. [3]
In the early 1990s, with partner Diandra Douglas, Neff co-founded and ran Wild Wolf Productions, a California-based (Culver City) documentary film production company that produced Beatrice Wood: Mama of Dada (1993) and America's Music: The Roots of Country (1996).
Neff produced, wrote, and directed the 30-minute documentary Herb Alpert: Music for Your Eyes , on the art and sculpture of musician Herb Alpert (2003); Country Music: The Spirit of America , (2003), an IMAX film which traces the history of the United States in the 20th century through country music; and Chances: The Women of Magdalene (2006), a feature-length documentary on the socially conscious organization Magdalene, located in Nashville, that recovers prostitutes off the street.
He has served on the board of the International Documentary Association, the Tennessee Governor's Film Advisory Board, the board of directors of the Watkins College of Art&Design in Nashville, was Chairman of Finance on the Belcourt Theater board, and was co-chairman of the Nashville Film Festival. He is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where he sat on the Nominating Committee for Best Documentary. Neff has participated on various documentary panels at film festivals around the world.
Neff has taught at his alma mater as an adjunct professor (School of Cinematic Arts at USC). In the 1990s he taught a course on music video production. His students taking the course (USC Cinema 499) shot various music videos for country music artists such as Radney Foster, and others. Neff obtained financing for the program from various records labels, such as Arista Nashville. [4]
Neff is currently an associate professor of film and video production at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. [5] [6]
Feature films
Short documentaries
Feature documentaries
Television documentaries
Corporate films
Wins
Nominations
The Documentary Channel was an American digital cable and satellite television network that featured documentary programming. It aired independent documentary films from around the world, including those not released in the United States. The channel was replaced by Pivot, a channel aimed at young adults between 18 and 34 years old, that was also owned by Participant Media, and debuted on August 1, 2013. Pivot ceased operations on October 31, 2016, folding the former Documentary Channel channel space.
ITVS is a service in the United States which funds and presents documentaries on public television through distribution by PBS and American Public Television, new media projects on the Internet, and the weekly series Independent Lens on PBS. Aside from Independent Lens, ITVS funded and produced films for more than 40 television hours per year on the PBS series POV, Frontline, American Masters and American Experience. Some ITVS programs are produced along with organizations like Latino Public Broadcasting and KQED.
Frederic Remington: The Truth of Other Days is a 1991 documentary film of American Western artist Frederic Remington made for the PBS series American Masters. It was produced and directed by Tom Neff and written by Neff and Louise LeQuire. Actor Gregory Peck narrated the film and Ned Beatty was the voice of Remington when reading his correspondence.
Beatrice Wood: Mama of Dada is a 1993 documentary film written and directed by Tom Neff about the avant-garde Dada artist Beatrice Wood.
America's Music: The Roots of Country is a 1996 three-part, six episode documentary about the history of American country music directed by Tom Neff and Jerry Aronson and written by Neff and Robert K. Oermann. The film touches on many of the styles of music that make up country music, including: Old-time music, Cajun music, Folk music, Rockabilly, Western music, Western swing, the Bakersfield sound, Honky-tonk and the Nashville sound. Country music artist and actor Kris Kristofferson narrates the three-part series.
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire is a 2004 Canadian documentary film about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It was directed by Peter Raymont and inspired by the book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (2003), by now-retired Canadian Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire. It was co-produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Société Radio-Canada, White Pine Pictures, and DOC: The Documentary Channel.
Jon Alpert is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films.
Leanne Pooley ONZM is a Canadian filmmaker based in Auckland, New Zealand. Pooley was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, she immigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1980s and began working in the New Zealand television and film industry before moving to England where she worked for many of the world's top broadcasters. She returned to New Zealand in 1997 and started the production company Spacific Films. Her career spans more than 25 years and she has won numerous international awards. Leanne Pooley was made a New Zealand Arts Laureate in 2011 and an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year's Honours List 2017. She is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Chris Metzler is an American film director known for documentaries. His documentary Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone (2010) is listed in the 100 Best Documentaries ranked by the Tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes
Herb Alpert: Music for Your Eyes is a 2002 American documentary film about the paintings and sculptures of musician and record producer Herb Alpert. It was written, produced and directed by Tom Neff. The soundtrack of the film is co-composed and performed by Alpert.
Red Grooms: Sunflower in a Hothouse is a 1986 short film biography of the Nashville-born artist Red Grooms. It was written by Tom Neff, co-directed by Neff and Louise LeQuire, and produced by Neff and Madeline Bell. The film was funded by the Tennessee State Museum and was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject.
Chances: The Women of Magdalene is a 2006 documentary film produced and directed by Tom Neff, and written by Neff and Barry Rubinow. The documentary features the socially conscious organization known as "Magdalene," located in Nashville, Tennessee. The system of recovery practiced at Magdalene is based on the twelve steps and twelve traditions of Narcotics Anonymous.
Louise Dahl-Wolfe: Painting with Light is a 1999 documentary film about Louise Dahl-Wolfe, an important woman in the history of photography. It was written and directed by Tom Neff, and produced by Neff and Madeline Bell, who previously collaborated on the Oscar nominated short-documentary Red Grooms: Sunflower in a Hothouse (1986).
Barry Rubinow is a film executive and editor, born in Glen Rock, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City. Currently, he lives in West Hills, Los Angeles, California.
Jenni Alpert is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist and pianist.
Peter Raymont is a Canadian filmmaker and producer and the president of White Pine Pictures, an independent film, television and new media production company based in Toronto. Among his films are Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (2005), A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman (2007), The World Stopped Watching (2003) and The World Is Watching (1988). The 2011 feature documentary West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson and 2009's Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould were co-directed with Michèle Hozer.
EyeSteelFilm is a Montreal-based Canadian cinema production company co-founded by Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin, dedicated to socially engaged cinema, bringing social and political change through cinematic expression. Today the studio is run by co-presidents Mila Aung-Thwin and Bob Moore.
Kensington Communications is a Toronto-based production company that specializes in documentary films and documentary/factual television series. Founded in 1980 by president Robert Lang, Kensington Communications Inc. has produced over 250 productions from documentary series and films to performing arts and children's specials. Since 1998, Kensington has also been involved in multi-platform interactive projects for the web and mobile devices.
Mitchell W. Block was an American filmmaker, primarily a producer of documentary films.
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).
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