Jeffrey Friedman (filmmaker)
Encyclopedia
Jeffrey Friedman is a non-fiction filmmaker, director, producer, writer and editor. Friedman has won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
for the film Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt
.
since 1987, when they formed the production company Telling Pictures in San Francisco, California. Together they wrote, directed, and co-produced HOWL
(2010), starring James Franco as the poet Allen Ginsberg
, featuring Jon Hamm, David Strathairn
, Mary-Louise Parker
, Jeff Daniels
, Alessandro Nivola
, Treat Williams
, and Bob Balaban
. HOWL, which was executive produced by Gus Van Sant
, premiered on opening night at the Sundance Film Festival, followed by the Berlin and London International Film Festivals. It was released theatrically and on home video by Oscilloscope Laboratories in the U.S. and internationally by The Match Factory. HOWL received a 2011 Freedom of Expression Award from the National Board of Review.
Friedman & 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. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Common Threads in 1990, as well as a Peabody Award, and an Emmy Award for Bobby McFerrin’s original all-vocal score.
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
, 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, and Friedman and Epstein won Emmy Awards for directing.
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, Paragraph 175 had its US 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).
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. Jeffrey began studying acting when he was nine, and at age twelve 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 such films 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 Scorcsese.
Academy Award for Documentary Feature
The Academy Award for Documentary Feature is among the most prestigious awards for documentary films.- Winners and nominees:Following the Academy's practice, films are listed below by the award year...
for the film Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt is a 1989 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,...
.
Career
Friedman has been making films with Rob EpsteinRob Epstein
Rob Epstein, also credited as Robert P. Epstein, is a director, producer, writer and editor. Epstein has won two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature for the films The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt....
since 1987, when they formed the production company Telling Pictures in San Francisco, California. Together they wrote, directed, and co-produced HOWL
Howl
"Howl" is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1955 and published as part of his 1956 collection of poetry titled Howl and Other Poems. The poem is considered to be one of the great works of the Beat Generation, along with Jack Kerouac's On the Road and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch...
(2010), starring James Franco as the poet Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, featuring Jon Hamm, David Strathairn
David Strathairn
David Russell Strathairn is an American actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for portraying journalist Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck...
, Mary-Louise Parker
Mary-Louise Parker
Mary-Louise Parker is an American actress, known for her current lead role on Showtime's television series Weeds portraying Nancy Botwin, for which she has received several nominations and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2006...
, Jeff Daniels
Jeff Daniels
Jeffrey Warren "Jeff" Daniels is an American actor, musician and playwright. He founded a non-profit theatre company, the Purple Rose Theatre Company, in his home state of Michigan...
, Alessandro Nivola
Alessandro Nivola
Alessandro Antine Nivola is an American actor, perhaps best known for his roles in the films Best Laid Plans, Jurassic Park III, Face/Off, and the first two films of the Goal! trilogy.-Personal life:...
, Treat Williams
Treat Williams
Richard Treat Williams is a Screen Actors Guild Award–nominated American actor and children's book author who has appeared on film, stage and television...
, and Bob Balaban
Bob Balaban
Robert Elmer "Bob" Balaban is an American actor, author and director.-Personal life:Balaban was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Eleanor and Elmer Balaban, who owned several movie theatres and later was a pioneer in cable television...
. HOWL, which was executive produced by Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1997 film Good Will Hunting and his 2008 film Milk, both of which were also nominated for Best Picture, and won the...
, premiered on opening night at the Sundance Film Festival, followed by the Berlin and London International Film Festivals. It was released theatrically and on home video by Oscilloscope Laboratories in the U.S. and internationally by The Match Factory. HOWL received a 2011 Freedom of Expression Award from the National Board of Review.
Friedman & Epstein's first film together was Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt is a 1989 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,...
, inspired by the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt
NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt
The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, often abbreviated to AIDS Memorial Quilt, is an enormous quilt made as a memorial to and celebration of the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes...
. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....
, Common Threads recounts the first decade of AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
in America through stories of five individuals featured in the Quilt. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Common Threads in 1990, as well as a Peabody Award, and an Emmy Award for Bobby McFerrin’s original all-vocal score.
Their film The Celluloid Closet
The Celluloid Closet
The Celluloid Closet is a 1996 American documentary film directed and written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The film is based on the 1981 book of the same name written by Vito Russo, and on previous lecture and film clip presentations given in person by Russo 1972–82.Russo researched the...
, based on the book by film historian Vito Russo
Vito Russo
Vito Russo was an American LGBT activist, film historian and author who is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet ....
, depicts a 100-year history of homosexual characters in Hollywood movies. Narrated by Lily Tomlin
Lily Tomlin
Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin is an American actress, comedienne, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960's when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in...
, The Celluloid Closet had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
, 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, and Friedman and Epstein won Emmy Awards for directing.
In 2000 they directed and produced Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175 (film)
Paragraph 175 is a documentary film released in 2000, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and narrated by Rupert Everett. The film was produced by Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, Janet Cole, Michael Ehrenzweig, Sheila Nevins and Howard Rosenman. The film chronicles the lives of several gay...
, a film that explores the untold history of homosexuals during the Nazi regime in Europe. Narrated by Rupert Everett
Rupert Everett
Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as an openly gay student at an English public school, set in the 1930s...
, and filmed in Germany, France and Spain, Paragraph 175 had its US 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).
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. Jeffrey began studying acting when he was nine, and at age twelve he acted professionally in two off-Broadway productions. He played Emil in "Emil and the Detectives
Emil and the Detectives
Emil and the Detectives is a 1929 novel for children set mainly in Berlin, by the German writer Erich Kästner. It was Kästner's first major success, the only one of his pre-1945 works to escape Nazi censorship, and remains his best-known work, and has been translated into at least 59 languages...
" and a schoolboy on the first day of integration in Little Rock, Arkansas in "Black Monday" by Reginald Rose
Reginald Rose
Reginald Rose was an American film and television writer most widely known for his work in the early years of television drama. Rose's work is marked by its treatment of controversial social and political issues...
.
Friedman began his film training by apprenticing in the editing rooms of such films as Marjoe
Marjoe
Marjoe is a 1972 American documentary film produced and directed by Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan about the life of evangelist Marjoe Gortner. It won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.- Story:...
(Academy Award, Documentary Feature, 1972) and William Friedkin
William Friedkin
William Friedkin is an American film director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing The French Connection in 1971 and The Exorcist in 1973; for the former, he won the Academy Award for Best Director...
's The Exorcist
The Exorcist
The Exorcist is a novel of supernatural suspense by William Peter Blatty, published by Harper & Row in 1971. It was inspired by a 1949 case of demonic possession and exorcism that Blatty heard about while he was a student in the class of 1950 at Georgetown University, a Jesuit school...
(1973). Other early credits include the pole-vault segment directed by Arthur Penn
Arthur Penn
Arthur Hiller Penn was an American film director and producer with a career as a theater director as well. Penn amassed a critically acclaimed body of work throughout the 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:...
and edited by Dede Allen
Dede Allen
Dorothea Carothers "Dede" Allen was an American film editor, well-known "film editing doctor" to the major American movie studios, and one of cinema's all-time celebrated 'auteur' film editors....
for Visions of Eight
Visions of Eight
Visions of Eight is a 1973 documentary film offering a stylized look at the 1972 Summer Olympics, directed by eight different directors. It was screened at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition....
(1973), about the 1972 Munich Olympics, and Raging Bull (Academy Award, Film Editing, 1980), edited by Thelma Schoonmaker
Thelma Schoonmaker
Thelma Schoonmaker is an American film editor who has worked with director Martin Scorsese for over forty years. She has edited all of Scorsese's films since Raging Bull...
and directed by Martin Scorcsese.
Filmography
All films jointly with Rob Epstein:- 1989: Common Threads: Stories from the QuiltCommon Threads: Stories from the QuiltCommon Threads: Stories from the Quilt is a 1989 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,...
— Director, Producer, Writer - 1993: Where Are We? Our Trip Through America — Director, Producer
- 1995: The Celluloid ClosetThe Celluloid ClosetThe Celluloid Closet is a 1996 American documentary film directed and written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The film is based on the 1981 book of the same name written by Vito Russo, and on previous lecture and film clip presentations given in person by Russo 1972–82.Russo researched the...
— Director, Producer, Writer - 1999: Xtreme: Sports to Die For — Director, Producer (TV)
- 2000: Paragraph 175Paragraph 175 (film)Paragraph 175 is a documentary film released in 2000, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and narrated by Rupert Everett. The film was produced by Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, Janet Cole, Michael Ehrenzweig, Sheila Nevins and Howard Rosenman. The film chronicles the lives of several gay...
— Director, Producer - 2002: Underground Zero — Director (segment "Isaiah's Rap")
- 2002: "Crime & Punishment" — Director, Producer** (TV series aka "Law & Order: Crime & Punishment")
- 2006: Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America: Gold Rush — Director (TV)
- 2007: Save Me — Executive Producer
- 2009: Sex in '69: The Sexual Revolution in America — Executive Producer
- 2010: HowlHowl (film)First Howl is an upcoming horror film directed by David Flores and written by Clint Morris and stars Parisse Boothe, Eric Stoltz and Kristina Anapau...
— Director, Producer, Writer