David Weissman (documentary filmmaker)

David Weissman is a filmmaker, producer and director.[1] His works include the Emmy-nominated We Were Here documentary[2] and The Cockettes, and he is also the director of short films.[3]

Not to be confused with David Weissman or David Weisman.

Early life

Weissman was raised in Los Angeles[2] and went to University High School. After moving to San Francisco in 1976,[4] he worked in restaurants, was politically active,[2] and took film classes at City College of San Francisco.[5] He also worked as a legislative aide to San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt,[6] who served after the assassination of Harvey Milk.[2]

Career

Weissman began filmmaking as a student at the City College of San Francisco in the early 1980s. Beginning in the mid-1980s, he began producing short films.[7] In 1990, he was the first recipient of the Sundance Institute Mark Silverman Fellowship for New Producers, which included an internship on the Joel and Ethan Coen film Barton Fink.[8] He later worked as assistant cameraperson on the Oscar-winning documentary film In the Shadow of the Stars and as well as Terry Zwigoff's Crumb.[9]

In the 1990s, Weissman produced a series of public service announcements that focused on the emotional and psychological toll facing HIV-negative gay men during the AIDS epidemic in the United States.[8] He produced and co-directed the 2002 documentary The Cockettes,[1][2] which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival.[5] In 2008, he reconnected with Bill Weber, his filmmaking partner for The Cockettes, to film interviews that became the basis for the film We Were Here,[1] released in 2011 at the Sundance Film Festival[5] and in 2012 as a PBS Independent Lens documentary.[10]

In 2014, he began working on a documentary interview series, Conversations with Gay Elders, in which he works in partnership with gay men in their 20s and 30s as editors to profile gay men in their 70s and 80s.[11][12] The first interview in the series was released in 2017.[13][2] Six interviews have so far been released.[14]

In 2007, Weissman co-founded QDoc, a queer documentary film festival in Portland, Oregon.[15]

References
  1. McKinley, Jesse (2 September 2011). "One City's Plague Years, in Small Details". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 May 2021.
  2. Miller, Robert (11 June 2018). "Bringing gay elders' stories alive for the next generation". The Jewish News of Northern California. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  3. "We Were Here". PBS. 14 June 2012. Retrieved 14 May 2021.
  4. Smith, Nigel (December 6, 2011). "David Weissman Talks About His Harrowing AIDS Doc "We Were Here"". IndieWire. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  5. "Meet the 2011 Sundance Filmmakers - "We Were Here" Director David Weissman". IndieWire. January 20, 2011. Retrieved 9 June 2021.
  6. "Filmmaker David Weissman on "We Were Here"". San Francisco Examiner. 20 Feb 2011. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  7. "DAVID WEISSMAN: SHORTS". VisualAids.com. Retrieved 5 June 2021.
  8. "We Were Here: The Creative Team". WeWereHereFilm.com.
  9. "David Weissman: Filmmography". IMDb.com. Retrieved 8 June 2021.
  10. "'We Were Here' Revisits San Francisco's AIDS Epidemic of Early '80s". PBS. June 14, 2012. Retrieved 9 June 2021.
  11. "Origins: Conversations with Gay Elders". DavidWeissmanFilms.com. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  12. Walker-Dack, Roger. "Conversations With Gay Elders". EdgeMediaNetwork.com. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  13. Albo, Mike (16 September 2016). "Did the Internet Make Dating Worse for Gay People". VICE. Retrieved 5 June 2021.
  14. "Conversations With Gay Elders". DavidWeissmanFilms.com. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  15. Baer, April. "QDoc: Portland Festival Marks 10 Years Of Queer Cinema". Oregon Public Broadcasting. Retrieved 3 May 2021.


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