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Lisa Leeman

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Lisa Leeman

Straight (Heterosexual)

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DPA AMPAS IDA FILM INDEPENDENT WIF ALLIANCE OF WOMEN DIRECTORS

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Bio

Lisa Leeman has directed, produced, written & edited award-winning feature & short documentaries for the last thirty-five years. She believes that intimate portraiture is a form of activism. Her films illuminate contemporary social issues through intimate character-driven stories that follow people at critical turning points.

She is currently directing and producing WALK BY ME, a thirty-year followup to her groundbreaking first documentary, METAMORPHOSIS (Sundance’s Filmmakers Trophy; POV/PBS, 1990). Roger Ebert named Leeman’s ONE LUCKY ELEPHANT one of the best documentaries of 2011. Other producing & directing credits include AWAKE; CRAZY WISDOM; OUT OF FAITH; and WHO NEEDS SLEEP (with renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler), and a series of #MeToo PSAs. Lisa has edited award-winning documentaries for acclaimed filmmakers Stanley Nelson; Renee Tajima-Pena; Michele Ohayon, and Lourdes Portillo.

Lisa is a MacDowell Fellow, an upcoming Bogliasco Fellow, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her work is supported by Sundance, Catapult, the PGA, AFI, NEA, and the California Humanities Council. She is also a member of the Documentary Producers Alliance; International Documentary Association, Women in Film/LA; Alliance of Women Directors; and WGA West. A tenured professor at the University of Southern California, she has written about the ethics of documentary filmmaking. She has been the creative advisor for Film Independent's Documentary Global Media Makers, and she teaches workshops for the U.S. State Department’s Global Media Makers and American Film Showcase.

Projects

Walk by Me

Filmmaker Lisa Leeman and animation artist Gabi reconnect twenty-five years after Leeman profiled the evangelical transgender artist’s transition in the 1990 documentary Metamorphosis (Sundance Filmmakers’ Trophy/ POV). Now middle-aged, the two artists rekindle a lapsed friendship as they reckon with the past and face their “third chapter.”  Filmed over nine years as they navigate a series of crossroads in their sixties, Walk by Me weaves past and present to explore aging, art and resiliency, faith, friendship, and the blurred boundaries in documentary filmmaking.  The film invites audiences to question ideas often taken for granted: that aging equals decline; that gender is strictly binary; that you can be too old to pursue your dreams; or that individuals are solely responsible for the situations they find themselves in, versus the systems we live within.

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