September 27, 2004

Supervising producer of Fahrenheit 9/11 speaks at UCSC October 6

By Jennifer McNulty

Documentary filmmaker Tia Lessin, the supervising producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, will give a free public talk on Wednesday, October 6, at UCSC.

Tia Lessin

Lessin’s talk, “Documentary Film and Human Rights,” will take place from noon to 1:30 p.m. in Room 150 of the Communications Building.

An accomplished filmmaker in her own right, Lessin has been part of Moore’s team for almost 10 years, working as supervising producer on Fahrenheit 9/11, winner of the 2003 Cannes Palme D'Or and the highest-grossing documentary film in history, and the Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine. She was coordinating producer of The Big One, and won two Emmy Award nominations--and one arrest--for her work as senior producer of The Awful Truth. Lessin was also a segment producer on the Emmy Award-winning TV Nation.

Lessin has produced and directed her own documentaries, including Behind the Labels about sweatshops in the United States, for which she received the 2002 Sidney Hillman Award for broadcast journalism. Her film A Family Divided tells the story of a Pakistani truck driver who remains jailed following his arrest by the FBI after September 11.

Among her other film credits, Lessin was coproducer of the Academy Award-nominated Shadows of Hate, distributed free to high schools around the country as part of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance Curriculum. Lessin is a graduate of Cornell University and a former labor organizer.

Lessin's visit is being sponsored by the UCSC Community Studies Department and the Film and Digital Media Department. In addition to the lecture, she will be meeting with UCSC faculty and students interested in documentary and social change. For more information about Lessin’s visit, please call Paul Ortiz, assistant professor of community studies, at (831) 459-5583. For disability-related needs, please call (831) 459-2371.

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