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Lisa Leeman
Los Angeles
Producer/Director/Educator
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Tags: USC School of Cinematic Arts  the documentary career  Sundance  Religion and Faith  POV  PBS  Middle East  Los Angeles Film Festival  Jewish issues  IDFA  ida fiscal sponsorship program  festival awards  Fair Use  ethics  education  documentary magazine  Docs about the Holocaust  Docs about Faith and Spirituality  Character-driven Documentaries  
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Supplementary Information
Title/Occupation:  Director  Educator  Producer  Writer 
Gender: Female
Race: Caucasian/White
Citizenship: USA

Biography: Lisa Leeman writes, produces, directs and edits documentary films. She has served as a judge at the Sundance Film Festival, the president of the International Documentary Association, and on the boards of the IDA and the National Coalition of Independent Public Broadcasting Producers. Lisa most recently directed the feature documentary One Lucky Elephant, which premiered at LAFF (Los Angeles Film Festival) and was broadcast on OWN as part of Oprah Winfrey's documentary of the month club. The film has screened at festivals around the world, including IDFA, & won Best Editing, Feature Documentary, at the Woodstock Film Festival; & was chosen as part of the U.S. State Department's American Documentary Showcase. ONE LUCKY ELEPHANT is the epic story of one man's determined quest to find a permanent home for Flora, the 26 year-old African elephant he adopted after she was orphaned in a culling. Through this character-driven story, the film explores the effect of captivity on elephants, and asks audiences to rethink our relationships with other species. www.oneluckyelephant.com Lisa is currently co-directing, with Paola Di Florio, a feature documentary about the life and teaching of the renowned swami Paramahansa Yogananda. (see the Facebook page) Lisa produced the feature documentary CRAZY WISDOM: The Life & Times of Chogyam Trunga, with director Johanna Demetrakas – the film profiles the influential and controversial Tibetan Buddhist teacher, his impact on the West, and the nature and limits of spiritual leadership. www.crazywisdomthemovie.com In 2006, Lisa finished directing the feature documentary OUT OF FAITH, filmed over four years. OUT OF FAITH is a character-driven doc that explores conflicts over intermarriage and assimilation as seen through three generations of a family headed by Holocaust survivors. She herself is the product of an interfaith marriage. OUT OF FAITH screened in over two dozen festivals internationally, premiered theatrically in March, 2008, and was broadcast nationally on PBS primetime in the winter of 09. www.outoffaith.net Leeman co-directed and edited the feature documentary WHO NEEDS SLEEP with renowned cinematographer & director Haskell Wexler (Sundance Film Festival, 2006). WHO NEEDS SLEEP investigates the perils of sleep deprivation and long work hours in the movie business, and in our culture at large, and asks who is really protecting American workers. Writing credits include MADE IN LA, which follows three Latina immigrants working in LA’s garment factories and their struggle for self-empowerment as they wage a three-year battle to bring a major clothing retailer to the negotiating table (Director: Almudena Carracedo; Silverdocs 2007; Los Angeles Film Festival 2007; POV/PBS 2007), and the theatrically released feature doc NAKED IN ASHES, which follows an ascetic yogi in India, and a young disciple who undergoes a secret initiation, as well as NOT IN GOD’S NAME (featuring the Dalai Lama), which explores the similar values underlying all faiths, and their potential for bridging perceived differences. Lisa’s first film, METAMORPHOSIS: Man Into Woman, won the Filmmakers’ Trophy upon its premiere at Sundance in 1990. METAMORPHOSIS (POV, ’90) was the first documentary film to intimately follow one person’s transformation from man to woman. Sheila Benson of the LA Times wrote: “The power and intimacy in Leeman’s unsentimental portrait of animator Gary/Gabi and his/her four-year quest for a sexual identity change is equaled only by the honesty and bravery of the film’s subject.” PBS broadcast METAMORPHOSIS on its celebrated series POV, where it earned the highest audience rating of any POV broadcast. It has won many awards, screened in festivals around the world, been broadcast in a dozen countries, and is screened frequently in university classes on psychology, sociology, sexuality, and women’s studies. In 1997, Lisa received an Emmy nomination for FENDER PHILOSOPHERS, a portrait of Americans as seen through our bumper stickers. That program, funded by an ITVS Station-Independent Partnership Program grant (co-produced with KPBS, San Diego), was presented by PBS’s National Programming Service. Two years later, Lisa’s comedic video diary BREAKING UP, which explores the heartbreak and humor at the end of romance, premiered on ARTE, Europe’s noted arts & culture station. Lisa wrote, produced and directed for the 2000 & 2001 seasons of the highly-rated series Medical Diary for the Discovery Health Network. Prior to that, she was commissioned to produce a short documentary for the World Festival of Sacred Music, a multi-cultural, multi-venue nine day event in Los Angeles, initiated by the Dalai Lama and attended by over 60,000 people across L.A. Other commissions include work for KCET’s Independent Eye; FNN’s Appreciating Art; and the Liberty Hill Foundation. Lisa writes articles specializing in the ethics of documentary filmmaking for the International Documentary Association. She is on the faculty of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and has taught documentary filmmaking in Beijing, China, & Amman, Jordan. Honors include the once-in-a-lifetime American Film Institute’s Independent Filmmaker Grant, the Western States Media Arts Fellowship, and the ITVS/PMN Station-Independent Partnership Program Grant, as well as numerous awards her films have received. She spent a decade editing award-winning social issue documentaries, including Renee Tajima-Pena’s The Journey Home (PBS Special); Michelle LeBrun’s Death: A Love Story (Sundance ‘99); Laura’s Simon’s Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary (POV; Winner, Freedom of Expression Award, Sundance ‘97); Marco Williams’ In Search of Our Fathers, on women-headed African-American families (FRONTLINE, PBS); Will My Mother Go to Berlin?, Micha Peled’s personal essay on Jewish-German relations (ARD, PBS); Stanley Nelson’s Methadone: Curse or Cure? (PBS); It Was A Wonderful Life, Michele Ohayon’s film on middle-class homeless women (PBS); and the TBS series THE NATIVE AMERICANS and AMERICA’S MUSIC: THE ROOTS OF COUNTRY. Lisa also consults on independent documentaries, such as Big Mama (Academy Award, Best Short Documentary, 2001 /HBO), Lost in La Mancha (Berlin Film Festival; Quixote Films); Home of the Brave (Paola Di Florio, Sundance, 2004); Homeland (Audience Award AFI Fest 2000); Good Kurds, Bad Kurds: No Friends But the Mountains (Best Documentary, Atlanta Film Festival); Who is Bernard Tapie? (LAIFF, 2001), Sonic Convergence, (Courtney Ross, Ross School); and A Place at the Table (Teaching Tolerance & the Southern Poverty Law Center).