David Koff

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David Koff (born September 24, 1939 in Philadelphia , † March 6, 2014 ) was an American filmmaker, author and social activist. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1977 for the documentary People of the Wind .

Life

David Koff was born in 1939 to Russian-Jewish parents. His father was an insurance broker. When he was six years old, his parents moved him to Los Angeles , where he grew up in the Van Nuys neighborhood . Koff first studied at Stanford University , where he graduated in 1961, followed by a master's degree at the University of California, Berkeley .

While he was participating in the civil rights movement, he heard an exchange student talk about Africa in 1960 in Alabama . So he decided to go to Africa. He was a teacher in Sierra Leone , a volunteer in Ghana and worked for publishers in Kenya and Tanzania . Among other things, he was the ghostwriter for John Okello .

With Tanzanians Msindo Mwinyipembe and Anthony Howarth , he shot the trilogy The Black Man's Land , which dealt with the colonial history of East Africa , the Mau Mau movement and the life of the first Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta . In 1976 he directed People of the Wind with Anthony Howarth . The film deals with nomads in Iran .

In 1978 he shot the controversial film Blacks Britannica for an American television station . The documentary portrayed Britain as a country oppressing blacks. His film Occupied Palestine (1981) dealt with Israeli settlements in the West Bank . The film caused more controversy than Black's Britannica . The premiere in San Francisco, for example, had to be postponed due to bomb threats.

In 1982 he moved to Mogadishu with his wife and children to create a documentary about Somalia that was never finished . After living there for several years, he moved to the United States. Here he started to work for the restaurant and hotel workers union at the age of 50 . The reason for this was that his political work made it harder to finance his films and he was looking for financial security for his family. Among other things, he uncovered a scandal surrounding the Belmont Learning Complex in Los Angeles while working as a union employee .

The 1992 film City on the Edge presented Los Angeles as a dangerous place for visitors, which he attributed to low wages.

In 2002 he made the film Windows , which tells the story of immigrants who worked in the restaurant in the World Trade Center and were killed in the terrorist attack on September 11, 2011 .

Koff, who last suffered from depression for several years , committed suicide .

family

His first marriage was to his fellow student Margaret Henry in the early 1960s.

In 1969, Koff married Msindo Mwinyipembe. The London- born children Kimera and Clea emerged from the marriage. Msindo and David separated in 2005. David Koff had previously moved to live with his new partner, the Crescent Dragonwagon .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c David Koff dies at 74; filmmaker and activist took on LA's Belmont Learning Complex , Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Koff, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American filmmaker, writer, and social activist
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 2014