Sam Pollard in Conversation with Geeta Gandbhir

The 36th Annual IDA Documentary Awards is honoring Sam Pollard with the Career Achievement Award. Take a look at Sam's work and hear from the accomplished editor/producer/director himself. In conversation with Pollard is award-winning producer, Geeta Gandbhir.

Between 1990 and 2010, Mr. Pollard edited a number of Spike Lee's films: Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Girl 6, Clockers, and Bamboozled. Mr. Pollard and Mr. Lee co-produced a number of documentary productions for the small and big screen, Four Little Girls, a feature-length documentary about the 1963 Birmingham church bombings which was nominated for an Academy Award and When The Levees Broke, a four-part documentary that won numerous awards, including a Peabody and three Emmy Awards. Five years later 2010 he co-produced and supervised the edit on the follow-up to Levees If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise.

Since 2012 Mr. Pollard has completed as a producer/director Slavery By Another Name, a 90-minute documentary for PBS that was in competition at the Sundance Festival, August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Stand, a 90-minute documentary in 2015 for American Masters, Two Trains Runnin’, a feature-length documentary in 2016 that premiered at the Full Frame Film Festival. Sammy Davis Jr., I’ve Gotta Be Me for American Masters premièred at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. In 2019 Mr. Pollard co-directed the Six Part Series Why We Hate that premiered on The Discovery Channel. His most recent work is as one of the directors on the 2020 HBO Series Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children.

The video includes ASL interpretation and open captions.