Jeremy Kagan

Jeremy Paul Kagan (born December 14, 1945) is an American film and television director, writer and producer. He was born in Mount Vernon, New York. He received his B.A. from Harvard in 1967 and went on to attend the newly formed NYU Graduate Institute of Film & Television was in the first class at the American Film Institute.

His feature credits include The Chosen (Grand Prix Montreal, Christopher Award) from the classic book by Chaim Potok, and "The Journey of Natty Gann" made for Disney which was the first American movie ever to win the Gold Prize at the Moscow Film Festival, the box-office hit 'Heroes about veterans returning from Viet Nam, the comic political thriller The Big Fixwith Richard Dreyfuss,"Golda's Balcony", "Big Man On Campus", By the Sword. He has been a prolific television director. In 1996, his work with the "Chicago Hope" episode Leave of Absence won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. The television movie "Katherine: The Making of an American Revolutionary" which he wrote and directed is recognized as one of the outstanding films on the movements of the sixties and "Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8" which he wrote, produced and directed won the Cable ACE Award for Best Dramatic Special. His film "Roswell: The UFO Conspiracy" garnered a Golden Globe nomination and he directed the pilot for the hit series'Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Other television films include "The Ballad oF Lucy Whipple", 'Courage" with Sophia Loren, "Scott Joplin", "Descending Angel" for HBO and for Showtime "Color of Justice", "Bobbie's Girl", and "Crown Heights" about the riots in 1991 which won the Humanitas Award in 2004 for "affirming the dignity of every person." This film also received an NACCP Award and the Directors Guild Nomination for best family film. Kagan also directed a movie episode of Steven Spielberg's Emmy winning "Taken". He has worked on several other series shows including "West Wing", "The Guardian", "Ressurection Boulevard",'Picket Fences, "Boomtown" and more.

Kagan produced and directed the 10 part series "The ACLU Freedom Files" in 2006 and 2007 which received a number of awards and was shown on Link TV, Court TV and PBS. The series now on DVD is about threats to US civil liberties covering issues from the Supreme Court, and the Patriot Act, to Dissent, Gay and Lesbian Rights, and the Drug Wars. Kagan recently made a number of short documentaries and advocacy films for NGOs including The Doe Fund which works with the homeless and formerly incarcerated, and The Democracy School a movement developing local governance, and Bioneers which advances achievements in environmental and social justice.

Mr. Kagan is a Full Tenured Professor at the University of Southern California where he teaches the graduate courses in directing and has recently created the Center for Change Making Media which is to become a hub for research and training in advocacy cinematic techniques. He is the author of the book DIRECTORS CLOSE UP (Scarecrow, 2006). He has served as Artistic Director at the Robert Redford's Sundance Institute and is on a National Board Member of the Directors Guild of America and Chairperson of its Special Projects Committee which provides cultural and educational programs for the 14,000 members. In 2004 he was honored with the Robert Aldrich Award for "extraordinary service to the guild."

Kagan lives in Venice, California with his companion Anneke Campbell who is an author and was the writer on the series Freedom Files, and his daughter Eve is a teacher, actress, writer and yoga instructor who graduated Harvard’s Graduate School of Education in "08 and will be running a theater program in Uganda.

External links

• Jeremy Kagan at IMDb