James Longley (director)

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James Bertrand Longley (born January 4, 1972 in Eugene , Oregon ) is an American film director , film producer and documentary filmmaker who was nominated twice for an Oscar .

Life

Longley studied film and Russian at the University of Rochester and Wesleyan University in Middletown , Connecticut , and was also a graduate of the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography , a state film school in Moscow . He speaks fluent Russian. The addition of Bertrand to his name is intended as an homage to the philosopher Bertrand Russell .

For his first short documentary as a schoolboy Portrait of Boy with Dog , which he published in March 1994, he was awarded the Student Academy Awards of the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In it he portrays a boy who lives with his dog in a Moscow orphanage. Longley worked in the following years as a projectionist, English teacher, editor and web designer in various cities in both America and Russia. His documentary Gaza Strip was made in 2002 and shows children who were met by Longley at the Karni border crossing in the Gaza Strip and who while there they pass the time shooting with slingshots, angry and helpless towards their situation and the poverty in which they are Life. In 2007 Longley and Yahaya Sinno received an Oscar nomination in the “Best Documentary” category for his film Iraq in Fragments . However, the Oscar went to Davis Guggenheim and the film An Inconvenient Truth . The film consists of three parts and describes the life situation of the Sunni , Shiite and Kurdish populations during the first two years of the Iraq war . He was presented at the Sundance Film Festival . In 2008 Longley was nominated again for an Oscar in the category Best Documentary Short Film with Sari's Mother , but lost out to Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth, who were able to receive the award for their film Freeheld . The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival .

For another film project, Longley was in Iraq between 2007 and 2009 , where he shot footage regarding the elections taking place in the country and the related protests. Because of interviews he conducted with people on the street, there were disagreements with those in power in the country, which meant that the film was initially not allowed to be shown. In 2009 , Longley was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the Genius Prize ), which at the time was endowed with $ 500,000. Longley is also the founder of Daylight Factory, a production company that creates documentaries on topics of international interest and is committed to broadcasting these films internationally. The documentary filmmaker also makes contributions to the D-Wort, where documentary filmmakers around the world have come together in an online community. He is currently in the process of making a documentary in Pakistan with the working title Project Kashmir .

Filmography (selection)

  • 1994: Portrait of Boy with Dog
  • 2002: Gaza Strip
  • 2006: Iraq in Fragments
  • 2007: Sari's Mother
  • 2007–2009: Untitled Iran Project
  • 2012: Ejaz's Story: Unicef ​​Pakistan

Awards (selection)

Web links

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  1. James Longley biography at IMDb (English). Retrieved February 13, 2014.
  2. James Longley - Filmmaker at macfound.org (English). Retrieved February 13, 2014.
  3. a b c James Longley's biography ( memento from May 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) at features.instituteartistmanagement.com (English). Retrieved January 13, 2014.
  4. Gaza Strip ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) at filmthreat.com (English). Retrieved February 13, 2014.
  5. daylight factory at daylightfactory.com (English). Retrieved February 13, 2014.