Jeffrey Tuchman
Jeffrey Tuchman is an award-winning documentary producer, director and writer who, for the past twenty years, has dedicated himself to the creation of innovative documentary film and television. In that time, Mr. Tuchman has built a formidable body of long-form documentary work, with over 30 films to his credit which have aired on A&E, PBS, The History Channel, NHK, ABC, Discovery/TLC, Court TV and HBO among others. Mr. Tuchman is known for the exploration of a broad spectrum of stories, subjects and styles in his filmmaking. He has just completed MAVERICKS, MIRACLES & MEDICINE, a four-part series on the history of medicine for The History Channel. He was senior producer of the 1998 ‘TILL DEATH DO US PART, an award-winning feature-length documentary which followed notorious polygamist Alex Joseph, his eight wives and 21 children as they all attempted to cope with his impending death from cancer. Over the past few years, Mr. Tuchman has been senior or supervising pr! oducer on a more than a dozen investigative documentaries, looking at such varied subjects as the HMO crisis, the rise in heroin addiction among young women, and the erosion of our privacy caused by the proliferation of video-surveillance cameras. In 1992, Mr. Tuchman directed THE MAN FROM HOPE, the acclaimed Clinton biography shown at the Democratic Convention. Widely hailed as an historic piece of political filmmaking, THE MAN FROM HOPE began his three-year partnership with television producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. Mr. Tuchman co-produced SELF PORTRAITS (with filmmaker Bob Altman), an award-winning one-hour documentary special for Showtime, and one of the first broadcast documentaries shot entirely by non-professionals on small-format video. He also directed WHITE HOUSE, a one-hour film in which Tuchman followed photographer Robert McNeely as he documented the Clinton presidency. Produced for NHK/Japan, WHITE HOUSE was one of the first full-length documentaries t! o be shot entirely in high-definition television (HDTV). It wa! s awarde d the Special Jury Prize at the 1995 International Electronic Cinema Festival in Japan, and had its U.S. premiere at the Kennedy Center. It aired in the U.S. in 2002 as one of the flagship documentaries on HD-Net, America’s first all high-definition broadcaster. In 1996 Mr. Tuchman created the series SCIENCE TIMES (with NYT Television) for Discovery/TLC. He executive produced and wrote the pilot for the series, which took a verité look inside the scientific process. Earlier in his career, Mr. Tuchman distinguished himself as a producer and writer of issue documentaries on such diverse topics as the AIDS crisis, U.S./Soviet relations, the public schools, the environment, and penal reform. Also in that period, he co-produced the pilot for CHOICES, a PBS series on changing social values in America (for WGBH/Boston). He served as a program consultant on two national PBS specials -- CONDITION CRITICAL: THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE FORUM, and THE ISSUE IS RACE, (also for WGBH), an! d as a consultant on the development of ECU, a PBS series from the producers of the flagship series POV. In addition to his documentary work, Mr. Tuchman has made a number of forays into the world of political and issue/advocacy media. In addition to the aforementioned MAN FROM HOPE, he directed many of the ads for Michael Dukakis’ Presidential bid, and several for Bill Clinton’s ’92 campaign (for which he won a Pollie Award). More recently, he directed spots for Hillary Clinton’s 2000 senate campaign. Campaigns and Elections Magazine named his “Ed Koch” spot for Hillary, “the best political ad of the 2000 election season”. He has also directed public service campaigns for Public Agenda, The Rainforest Alliance, UNICEF, and PBS. Currently, Mr. Tuchman works through his new company, Documania Films. In addition to the just completed MAVERICKS, MIRACLES & MEDICINE, he is executive producing three documentaries for Court TV, including RAILROADED IN TEXAS, a groundbreaking! film on the recent civil-rights debacle in Tulia, Texas. He i! s develo ping several projects including a feature-length film about politics and popular culture, a film on Hollywood’s treatment of hate over the past half century, and one about Muslim stand-up comic Shazia Mirza. Meanwhile, he continues work on TESTIMONY, a film about his father’s return to Germany to testify in a Nazi war-crimes trial against the man who murdered his mother. Finally, Mr. Tuchman holds a faculty appointment at the Columbia University graduate school of Journalism where he teaches documentary filmmaking. |