Mitchell Block is an American filmmaker whose 2010 film Poster Girl

Poster Girl (film)

Poster Girl is a 2010 documentary film about an American soldier's experience with posttraumatic stress disorder after returning from the Iraq War. The film showed at the 37th Telluride Film Festival on September 3, 2010...

was nominated for Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) and who Executive Produced the Academy Award winning documentary short film Big Mama

Big Mama (film)

Big Mama is a 2000 documentary film by Tracy Seretean. It chronicles the struggle of 89-year-old Viola Dees and her fight to retain custody of her grandson. It illustrates many of the difficulties facing an increasing number of grandparents raising their grandchildren in the USA today...

for HBO in 2000.

Block attended the Hun School of Princeton

Hun School of Princeton

The Hun School of Princeton is a private, coeducational, secondary boarding school located in Princeton Township, New Jersey, United States. The school has a Princeton, New Jersey mailing address. The school serves students from grades 6 through high school. Currently, the headmaster is Jonathan...

, graduating in 1968. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in fine arts from the Tisch School of the Arts

Tisch School of the Arts

Tisch School of the Arts is one of the 15 schools that make up New York University ....

 at New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

, where he majored in television and film production,and was awarded an MBA from the Columbia Business School

Columbia Business School

Columbia Business School is the business school of Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1916 to provide business training and professional preparation for undergraduate and graduate Columbia University students...

.

In 1990, film makers posted a protest to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...

 arguing that Block, as a member of the 40-member Documentary Steering Committee that selects films as nominees had a conflict of interest based on the fact that his company Direct Cinema owns the rights to three of the five films selected as nominees for best documentary feature, while Michael Moore

Michael Moore

Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...

's Roger & Me

Roger & Me

Roger & Me is a 1989 American documentary film directed by Michael Moore. Moore portrays the regional negative economic impact of General Motors CEO Roger Smith's summary action of closing several auto plants in Flint, Michigan, costing 30,000 people their jobs at the time and economically...

was omitted. Although the Academy's Executive Director, Bruce Davis said,"Mitch Block said firmly and unequivocally that he thought that Roger & Me should be one of the nominees".

Among the films and documentary series that Block has conceived, created and produced are Carrier

Carrier (documentary)

Carrier is an Emmy Award-winning 10-hour documentary television series about a six-month deployment of a United States Navy aircraft carrier in 2005 from the United States to the Middle East and back...

 and Another Day in Paradise

Another Day in Paradise

"Another Day in Paradise" is a song by Phil Collins released as the first single from his number-one album But Seriously . As with his song from Genesis, "Man on the Corner" "Another Day in Paradise" was written to bring attention to the problem of homelessness; as such, the song was a substantial...

, both of which were broadcast on the Public Broadcasting Service

Public Broadcasting Service

The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

 and the National Geographic Channel

National Geographic Channel

National Geographic Channel, also commercially abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo, is a subscription television channel that airs non-fiction television programs produced by the National Geographic Society. Like History and the Discovery Channel, the channel features documentaries with factual...

 internationally.

In 2010 Mitchell Block's short film ..No Lies was selected for the National Film Registry by the Librarian of Congress. The other films so far selected from films produced in 1973 are: American Graffiti

American Graffiti

American Graffiti is a 1973 coming of age film co-written/directed by George Lucas starring Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips and Harrison Ford...

, Badlands

Badlands

A badlands is a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded by wind and water. It can resemble malpaís, a terrain of volcanic rock. Canyons, ravines, gullies, hoodoos and other such geological forms are common in badlands. They are often...

, Enter the Dragon

Enter the Dragon

Enter the Dragon is a 1973 Hong Kong martial arts co-production with Golden Harvest and Warner Bros. studios, directed by Robert Clouse; starring Bruce Lee, Jim Kelly and John Saxon. This is Bruce Lee's final film appearance before his death on July 20, 1973...

, 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...

, Frank Film

Frank Film

Frank Film is a 1973 American animated short film. It is a compilation of images co-creator Frank Mouris had collected from magazines interwoven with two narrations, one giving a mostly linear autobiography and the other stating words having to do with the images, the story the first voice is...

, Mean Streets

Mean Streets

Mean Streets is a 1973 drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Scorsese and Mardik Martin. The film stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. It was released by Warner Bros. on October 2, 1973...

 and The Sting

The Sting

The Sting is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936 that involves a complicated plot by two professional grifters to con a mob boss . The film was directed by George Roy Hill, who previously directed Newman and Redford in the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.Created by...

. Fewer than a handful of the 550 films on the registry (as of 2011) were made by students and are short films.

Since 1978 Block has been an adjunct professor at the School of Cinematic Arts

USC School of Cinematic Arts

The USC School of Cinematic Arts, until 2006 named the School of Cinema-Television , is a film school within the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. It is the oldest and largest such school in the United States, established in 1929 as a joint venture with the Academy of...

 of the University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

most currently teaching in the Peter Stark Producing Program.