Blowback Productions
Encyclopedia
Blowback Productions is an independent film and television production company founded in 1988 by Marc Levin
. Along with producing partner, Daphne Pinkerson, they have made over 20 films and won numerous awards.
award and was nominated for an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking. His dramatic feature film, SLAM
, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival
and the Camera D'Or at Cannes
in 1998, received international recognition for its seamless blending of the real world with a narrative flow. Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Brace yourself for a slam-dunk of a movie, in an in-your-face cinema verite-style that makes Godard
's 'Breathless' seem like a cartoon."
Levin’s Brick City is a ground-breaking docu-series about the city of Newark, its Mayor, Cory Booker
, and the people on the frontlines of a city struggling to change. Executive produced and directed with Mark Benjamin and produced with Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker
, the 5-hour series aired its first Peabody Award winning season on the Sundance Channel in September 2009. The show also received a 2010 Golden Eagle Cine Award and was nominated for both an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking and a NAACP Image Award. The second season premiered on January 30, 2011. TV Guide wrote, “Brick City plays like a verité version of The Wire
, one of TV's finest series ever. It's the ultimate reality show.”
Levin’s Street Time, a television series produced by Columbia/Tristar for Showtime, received critical acclaim for its authenticity and verite style. Levin executive produced the series and directed 10 episodes. The show stars Rob Morrow
, Scott Cohen, Erica Alexander and Terrence Howard
. The Los Angeles Times called it "some of the most seductive television ever: vivid, distinctive, explosive storytelling . . .”
Levin’s documentary feature, Godfathers and Sons, was part of the highly regarded Martin Scorsese
PBS series, The Blues. Scorsese recruited an international team of directors with both feature and documentary experience - Charles Burnett
, Clint Eastwood
, Mike Figgis
, Richard Pierce and Wim Wenders
. Variety called Levin’s show "the crown jewel in the Scorsese series."
In the late nineties Levin created a hip-hop trilogy beginning with SLAM, a searing prison drama, which starred Saul Williams
, Sonja Sohn and Bonz Malone
. Whiteboys, a black comedy about white kids who want to be black rappers, starred Danny Hoch, Dash Mihok, Mark Webber and Piper Perabo
. Brooklyn Babylon, a fable inspired by the “Song of Songs,” starred Tariq Trotter, Bonz Malone
, and featured music by the legendary Grammy winners The Roots.
In Twilight Los Angeles, an adaptation of Anna Deavere Smith
's one-woman show, Levin fused a Broadway play with a documentary look at the LA riots. Twilight premiered at the Sundance 2000 Film Festival and was selected as the opening film of the International Human Rights Film Festival at Lincoln Center.
In 1992 Levin, along with Mark Benjamin, directed Oscar nominee Robert Downey, Jr. in The Last Party, a gonzo look at the Presidential campaign, weaving together the personal and the political fortunes of Downey and Bill Clinton
.
Levin and his documentary film partner, Daphne Pinkerson, have produced 11 films for HBO's documentary film division, including Triangle: Remembering the Fire, Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags, Mob Stories, Prisoners of the War on Drugs, The Execution Machine: Texas Death Row, Soldiers in the Army of God, and Gladiator Days. Thug Life in D.C. won the 1999 National Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special. Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock won the CableACE Award for Best Documentary Special of 1994. The sequel, Back in the Hood, premiered on HBO ten years later. They also produced Heir to an Execution, a documentary feature following Ivy Meeropol’s journey on the 50th anniversary of the execution of her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Heir was in competition at the Sundance film festival and aired on HBO.
In 1997, Levin was awarded the prestigious duPont-Columbia award for CIA: America's Secret Warriors, a three-part series that aired on the Discovery Channel. From the mid-seventies through the eighties he teamed up with one of America's most respected journalists, Bill Moyers. In 1988 Levin won a national Emmy award as a producer/editor of Moyers' The Secret Government - The Constitution in Crisis. He directed The Home Front with Bill Moyers, which was honored with the duPont-Columbia Gold Baton Award in 1992. Levin and his father, Al, teamed up on Portrait of an American Zealot which was made part of the Museum of Modern Art
's permanent film collection.
Levin made his on-camera debut in Protocols of Zion
, his street level look at the rise of anti-Semitism since 9/11 and the renewed popularity of the anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was released theatrically in the fall of 2005 and on HBO the spring of 2006.
Mr. Untouchable, the story of the original Black Godfather, Harlem heroin kingpin, Nicky Barnes, was released in theatres in 2007. It tells the true-life story of a real American Gangster from the point of view of law enforcement, associates, and Nicky Barnes, who appears for the first time in over a quarter century. "It makes American Gangster look like a fairy tale," declared E!
Marc Levin has also assumed the role of Executive Producer on a number of projects. In 2008 Levin was Executive Producer along side Beyoncé Knowles on Cadillac Records, the Chess Records story starring Jeffrey Wright, Adrian Brody, and Beyoncé. In the same year he executive produced the indie feature documentary Captured, the story of artist activist Clayton Patterson, the man who videotaped the 1988 Tompkins Square Park Riot and who has dedicated his life to documenting the final era of raw creativity and lawlessness in New York City's Lower East Side, a neighborhood famed for art, music and revolutionary minds. Levin executive produced a follow-up feature in 2010, Dirty Old Town, an absurdist valentine to a disappearing downtown Bohemia, by his son Daniel B. Levin, Jenner Furst and Julia Nason.
Levin also periodically directed episodes of the classic TV series, Law and Order.
Levin continued his twenty year working relationship with HBO with a trilogy on labor and the economy: TRIANGLE: Remembering the Fire, SCHMATTA: Rags to Riches to Rags, and HARD TIMES: Lost on Long Island, a film about the white-collar fallout of the Great Recession, which will air on HBO in 2012. HARD TIMES won the Audience Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October. Levin's first film for HBO Sports, Prayer for a Perfect Season, a film on the top high school basketball team in the country, premiered to widespread acclaim on HBO in October 2011.
, premiered on HBO March 21, 2011. She has been Marc Levin’s documentary film partner for the past 15 years. Along with Marc, she won the National Emmy for best documentary of 1999 for producing Thug Life in D.C., which premiered on HBO. Their documentary feature for HBO, Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags is a film about what happened to manufacturing in America through the emblematic story of the Garment Center in Manhattan. She was also the supervising producer on Brick City, a five-hour docu-reality series on Newark, NJ, which aired for two seasons on the Sundance Channel in 2009 and 2011. In 2007, she was the supervising producer on Mr. Untouchable, a film about heroin kingpin Nicky Barnes, which was theatrically released by Magnolia Films. In 2006, she was the Supervising Producer on Protocols of Zion, Levin’s personal look at 9/11, which aired on HBO/Cinemax and was theatrically released by ThinkFilm
. Heir to an Execution, a film she produced about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
, was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival
and aired on HBO in 2004. In 2003, she produced Godfathers and Sons, a film on Chicago Blues for Martin Scorsese
’s PBS series on Blues music.
In 2001, NARAL presented their Courageous Advocate Award to her for Soldiers in the Army of God, a film she produced and co-directed for HBO.
In the year 2000, she produced two films, Speak Truth to Power, a PBS special on human rights activists, and Twilight Los Angeles, Anna Deavere Smith’s performance film on the riots in South Central. For The Execution Machine, which also aired on HBO, she was able to secure unprecedented access to Death Row in Texas.
She was the supervising producer for the critically acclaimed Discovery Channel
series, CIA: America’s Secret Warriors.
Her other HBO films include Mob Stories, Prisoners of the War on Drugs, Gladiator Days, Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock and its ten year follow-up Back in the Hood.
For Bill Moyers
she produced The Home Front, The Politics of Addiction, Oklahoma City: One Year Later, and three parts of his series on youth violence.
In addition to producing, she also shoots stylized film and video with small format cameras. She has captured some cinematic firsts, filming a gang drive-by shooting in Little Rock, Arkansas (HBO’s Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock) and inmates injecting drugs in prison (HBO’s Prisoners of the War on Drugs.)
She was the Associate Producer on the dramatic feature SLAM and shot all of its montage footage.
In 1988, during the press restrictions in South Africa, she launched South Africa Now, a weekly half-hour news program which commissioned pieces from inside South Africa for broadcast on Public Television, CNN World Report and ITN.
She is now working on a film for HBO about white collar workers who lost their jobs in the Fall of 2008 when the market crashed.
Levin’s TV work spanned over three decades, starting with PBS
in the seventies and continuing with HBO through the nineties. He was one of Bill Moyers’ first producers at Public Television and one of Sheila Nevins’ most respected producers for the groundbreaking HBO series “America Undercover.” Levin appeared on the big screen in Protocols of Zion, a documentary film about the resurgence of anti-Semitism, directed by his son, Marc. The film was showcased at the Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released on HBO.
Levin was committed to the struggle for social justice and wanted to use media as a force for social change. He first came to national attention in 1970 with his controversial indictment of US foreign policy, “Who Invited U.S.?” The Nixon White House pressured the young Public Television service to cancel the broadcast but most stations defied the administration and the film was honored with the George Polk Award for best documentary. Levin went on to help renowned journalist Bill Moyers start his television career. They teamed up on a number of award-winning shows over the next fifteen years, including “Why Work?” “The Remarkable Yamato Family,” and “The Detroit Model.” He was senior producer on Moyers’ “The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis,” a history of covert CIA
operations leading up to Iran Contra, which won the National Emmy Award for News and Documentary in 1988.
Levin was one of the original producers at WNET/13, where he worked on the public affairs show “The 51st State” and the innovative magazine show, “The American Dream Machine.” In 1979 he produced the Emmy-winning 6 part series, “The New Immigrants.” At Channel 13, he met a young producer, Sheila Nevins, who went on to become the head of HBO’s non-fiction programming and winner of the Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award. He teamed up with Nevins at HBO and with his son Marc, and their producing partner, Daphne Pinkerson, they made a series of films including “Gang War: Bangin in Little Rock” which won the CableACE Award for Best Documentary of 1994 and “Thug Life in D.C.”, which won the 1999 National Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special.
Levin was one of the first to report on the rise of America’s religious right in the 1980 film “Portrait of an American Zealot,” now part of the Museum of Modern Art
’s permanent collection. He also broke new ground in the 1986 Frontline special “Inside the Jury” which captured the first jury deliberation ever recorded for television. Since his army service in the Philippines at the end of World War II, he was fascinated by Asian culture. He was the senior producer on public television’s 10-part series, “The Pacific Century,” which won the 1993 duPont-Columbia Award and a gold medal at the Houston Film Festival.
Levin’s career came full circle when he returned to one of his favorite themes in the three-hour series for the Discovery Channel on the Central Intelligence Agency, “CIA: America’s Secret Warriors,” which won the duPont Columbia Silver Baton Award in 1998.
Al Levin was born in Brooklyn on February 28, 1926, the first child of Herman and Shirley Levin. He quickly showed signs of things to come when he won the baby of the year contest that summer at the Rock Island Illinois State Fair. He grew up in Flatbush Brooklyn with two younger sisters, Helen and Sue, and attended the prestigious NY City Townsend Harris High School. At age 16, he left for Wesleyan University and in 1944 he enlisted in the Army and was sent to an intensive Japanese language program at Yale University. He was shipped overseas at the very end of the war, and worked as a translator in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines.
After the war, he married Hannah Alexander, also from Brooklyn, and they quickly started a family. Marc was born in 1951, Nicole in 1952, Danielle in 1954, and Juliette in 1960. During the fifties, Al and Hannah became active in both the labor and civil rights movement. Al worked at the Jersey Central Railroad and Hannah at a Westinghouse factory, where they were both union organizers. They brought their three young children to the famous 1963 Washington, D.C. Civil Rights march where Martin Luther King gave his “I Have A Dream Speech.”
By the sixties they grew restless and moved on to pursue professional careers. Al started as a local journalist for AP covering the New Jersey state house, while Hannah got her Ph.D in psychology and became a professor and therapist. Levin then moved on to the New York Post in 1961 where he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his series on mob activity. In 1964, during a major NYC newspaper strike, Levin made his move into television. He became the assignment editor at WCBS-TV and then in 1965 he became a producer for the WABC-TV local evening news. He produced his first documentary in 1968, “Sleep: The Fantastic Third of your Life,” and won his first New York Emmy for best documentary and best writing.
Levin was married to Hannah Alexander Levin for 49 years until she passed away in December 1997. They had a legendary love affair which touched everyone who knew them.
Levin was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the women’s rights movement. He constantly encouraged his wife and three daughters to challenge the system. In addition to their four children, they had eight grandchildren. Al, as he was known to his friends and colleagues, was an extraordinary character, a unique mix of family man, political activist, teacher and humorist. His interests ranged from the political economy to Japanese stone gardens and exotic horticulture. He was a life long athlete and avid tennis player, who could still be seen well into his seventies in Maplewood’s parks working on his new serve.
He was revered by his four children and beloved by his two sisters.
Marc described his father as a “hope-aholic who saw the potential for good in almost everyone. He had a passion to make the world better and a rage toward injustice. But he had no malice or bitterness. Always curious, compassionate and optimistic, he was truly forever young.”
Marc Levin
Marc Levin is an independent film producer and director. He is best known for his Brick City TV series, which won the 2010 Peabody award and was nominated for an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking and his dramatic feature film, SLAM, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance...
. Along with producing partner, Daphne Pinkerson, they have made over 20 films and won numerous awards.
Marc Levin
Independent filmmaker Marc Levin brings an original blend of narrative and verite techniques together in his feature films, television series, and documentaries. His Brick City TV series won the 2010 PeabodyPeabody
-Places:United States* Peabody, Indiana* Peabody, Kansas** Peabody Downtown Historic District, in Peabody, Kansas* Peabody, Massachusetts* Peabody, Cambridge, Massachusetts, a neighborhood* Peabody River, in New Hampshire-Institutions:...
award and was nominated for an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking. His dramatic feature film, SLAM
SLAM
Slam or SLAM may refer to:In computer science:* Simultaneous localization and mapping, a technique used by robots and autonomous vehicles* SLAM project, a Microsoft Research project...
, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
and the Camera D'Or at Cannes
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
in 1998, received international recognition for its seamless blending of the real world with a narrative flow. Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Brace yourself for a slam-dunk of a movie, in an in-your-face cinema verite-style that makes Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
's 'Breathless' seem like a cartoon."
Levin’s Brick City is a ground-breaking docu-series about the city of Newark, its Mayor, Cory Booker
Cory Booker
Cory Anthony Booker is the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Booker is a former Newark City Councilman...
, and the people on the frontlines of a city struggling to change. Executive produced and directed with Mark Benjamin and produced with Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker
Forest Whitaker
Forest Steven Whitaker is an American actor, producer, and director. He has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and for his recurring role as ex-LAPD Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the gritty, award-winning television...
, the 5-hour series aired its first Peabody Award winning season on the Sundance Channel in September 2009. The show also received a 2010 Golden Eagle Cine Award and was nominated for both an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking and a NAACP Image Award. The second season premiered on January 30, 2011. TV Guide wrote, “Brick City plays like a verité version of The Wire
The WIRE
the WIRE is the student-run College radio station at the University of Oklahoma, broadcasting in a freeform format. The WIRE serves the University of Oklahoma and surrounding communities, and is staffed by student DJs. The WIRE broadcasts at 1710 kHz AM in Norman, Oklahoma...
, one of TV's finest series ever. It's the ultimate reality show.”
Levin’s Street Time, a television series produced by Columbia/Tristar for Showtime, received critical acclaim for its authenticity and verite style. Levin executive produced the series and directed 10 episodes. The show stars Rob Morrow
Rob Morrow
Robert Alan "Rob" Morrow is an American actor. He is known for his portrayal of Don Eppes on Numb3rs and as Dr. Joel Fleischman on Northern Exposure, a role which garnered him three Golden Globes and two Emmy Award nominations for "Best Actor in a Dramatic Series."-Personal life:Morrow was born in...
, Scott Cohen, Erica Alexander and Terrence Howard
Terrence Howard
Terrence Dashon Howard is an American actor. Having his first major role in the 1995 film Mr. Holland's Opus, which subsequently led to a number of roles in films and high visibility among African American audiences. Howard broke into the mainstream with a succession of well-reviewed television...
. The Los Angeles Times called it "some of the most seductive television ever: vivid, distinctive, explosive storytelling . . .”
Levin’s documentary feature, Godfathers and Sons, was part of the highly regarded Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
PBS series, The Blues. Scorsese recruited an international team of directors with both feature and documentary experience - Charles Burnett
Charles Burnett
Charles Burnett may refer to:*Charles Burnett , American film director*Charles Burnett , Scottish Officer of Arms*Charles Burnett , Royal Air Force officer and Australian Chief of the Air Staff...
, Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
, Mike Figgis
Mike Figgis
Michael "Mike" Figgis is an English film director, writer, and composer.-Personal life:Figgis was born in Carlisle, England and grew up in Africa. Figgis for several years had a relationship with the actress Saffron Burrows and cast her in several films...
, Richard Pierce and Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...
. Variety called Levin’s show "the crown jewel in the Scorsese series."
In the late nineties Levin created a hip-hop trilogy beginning with SLAM, a searing prison drama, which starred Saul Williams
Saul Williams
Saul Stacey Williams is an American poet, writer, actor and musician known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop and for his leading role in the 1998 independent film Slam.-Biography:...
, Sonja Sohn and Bonz Malone
Bönz Malone
Bönz Malone was born in the Bronx and has been called the "Hunter S. Thompson of Hip Hop". He also co-wrote and starred in the prison film Slam, which won the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival Grand Jury Prize at Sundance....
. Whiteboys, a black comedy about white kids who want to be black rappers, starred Danny Hoch, Dash Mihok, Mark Webber and Piper Perabo
Piper Perabo
Piper Lisa Perabo is a Golden Globe Award nominated American stage, film and television actress.-Early life:Perabo was born in Dallas, Texas and grew up in Toms River, New Jersey, the daughter of Mary Charlotte , a physical therapist, and George William Perabo, a professor of poetry at Ocean...
. Brooklyn Babylon, a fable inspired by the “Song of Songs,” starred Tariq Trotter, Bonz Malone
Bönz Malone
Bönz Malone was born in the Bronx and has been called the "Hunter S. Thompson of Hip Hop". He also co-wrote and starred in the prison film Slam, which won the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival Grand Jury Prize at Sundance....
, and featured music by the legendary Grammy winners The Roots.
In Twilight Los Angeles, an adaptation of Anna Deavere Smith
Anna Deavere Smith
Anna Deavere Smith is an American actress, playwright, and professor. She is currently the artist in residence at the Center for American Progress.-Early life:...
's one-woman show, Levin fused a Broadway play with a documentary look at the LA riots. Twilight premiered at the Sundance 2000 Film Festival and was selected as the opening film of the International Human Rights Film Festival at Lincoln Center.
In 1992 Levin, along with Mark Benjamin, directed Oscar nominee Robert Downey, Jr. in The Last Party, a gonzo look at the Presidential campaign, weaving together the personal and the political fortunes of Downey and Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
.
Levin and his documentary film partner, Daphne Pinkerson, have produced 11 films for HBO's documentary film division, including Triangle: Remembering the Fire, Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags, Mob Stories, Prisoners of the War on Drugs, The Execution Machine: Texas Death Row, Soldiers in the Army of God, and Gladiator Days. Thug Life in D.C. won the 1999 National Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special. Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock won the CableACE Award for Best Documentary Special of 1994. The sequel, Back in the Hood, premiered on HBO ten years later. They also produced Heir to an Execution, a documentary feature following Ivy Meeropol’s journey on the 50th anniversary of the execution of her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Heir was in competition at the Sundance film festival and aired on HBO.
In 1997, Levin was awarded the prestigious duPont-Columbia award for CIA: America's Secret Warriors, a three-part series that aired on the Discovery Channel. From the mid-seventies through the eighties he teamed up with one of America's most respected journalists, Bill Moyers. In 1988 Levin won a national Emmy award as a producer/editor of Moyers' The Secret Government - The Constitution in Crisis. He directed The Home Front with Bill Moyers, which was honored with the duPont-Columbia Gold Baton Award in 1992. Levin and his father, Al, teamed up on Portrait of an American Zealot which was made part of the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
's permanent film collection.
Levin made his on-camera debut in Protocols of Zion
Protocols of Zion (film)
The Protocols of Zion is a 2005 documentary film by Jewish filmmaker Marc Levin about a resurgence of antisemitism in the United States in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks...
, his street level look at the rise of anti-Semitism since 9/11 and the renewed popularity of the anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was released theatrically in the fall of 2005 and on HBO the spring of 2006.
Mr. Untouchable, the story of the original Black Godfather, Harlem heroin kingpin, Nicky Barnes, was released in theatres in 2007. It tells the true-life story of a real American Gangster from the point of view of law enforcement, associates, and Nicky Barnes, who appears for the first time in over a quarter century. "It makes American Gangster look like a fairy tale," declared E!
Marc Levin has also assumed the role of Executive Producer on a number of projects. In 2008 Levin was Executive Producer along side Beyoncé Knowles on Cadillac Records, the Chess Records story starring Jeffrey Wright, Adrian Brody, and Beyoncé. In the same year he executive produced the indie feature documentary Captured, the story of artist activist Clayton Patterson, the man who videotaped the 1988 Tompkins Square Park Riot and who has dedicated his life to documenting the final era of raw creativity and lawlessness in New York City's Lower East Side, a neighborhood famed for art, music and revolutionary minds. Levin executive produced a follow-up feature in 2010, Dirty Old Town, an absurdist valentine to a disappearing downtown Bohemia, by his son Daniel B. Levin, Jenner Furst and Julia Nason.
Levin also periodically directed episodes of the classic TV series, Law and Order.
Levin continued his twenty year working relationship with HBO with a trilogy on labor and the economy: TRIANGLE: Remembering the Fire, SCHMATTA: Rags to Riches to Rags, and HARD TIMES: Lost on Long Island, a film about the white-collar fallout of the Great Recession, which will air on HBO in 2012. HARD TIMES won the Audience Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October. Levin's first film for HBO Sports, Prayer for a Perfect Season, a film on the top high school basketball team in the country, premiered to widespread acclaim on HBO in October 2011.
Daphne Pinkerson
Daphne Pinkerson (born January 24, 1970) is an American film and television producer, writer and director. She has worked on a range of award-winning social and political documentaries for HBO, PBS, Bill Moyers, and NBC, among others. Her most recent film, Triangle: Remembering the Fire, a cautionary tale about the relationship between business and government in the Gilded AgeGilded Age
In United States history, the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post–Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded...
, premiered on HBO March 21, 2011. She has been Marc Levin’s documentary film partner for the past 15 years. Along with Marc, she won the National Emmy for best documentary of 1999 for producing Thug Life in D.C., which premiered on HBO. Their documentary feature for HBO, Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags is a film about what happened to manufacturing in America through the emblematic story of the Garment Center in Manhattan. She was also the supervising producer on Brick City, a five-hour docu-reality series on Newark, NJ, which aired for two seasons on the Sundance Channel in 2009 and 2011. In 2007, she was the supervising producer on Mr. Untouchable, a film about heroin kingpin Nicky Barnes, which was theatrically released by Magnolia Films. In 2006, she was the Supervising Producer on Protocols of Zion, Levin’s personal look at 9/11, which aired on HBO/Cinemax and was theatrically released by ThinkFilm
THINKFilm
THINKFilm is a privately held production and distribution company founded in September 2001. It has been a division of David Bergstein’s Capitol Films since 2006. Bergstein also serves as the company’s chairman...
. Heir to an Execution, a film she produced about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were American communists who were convicted and executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to their passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union...
, was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
and aired on HBO in 2004. In 2003, she produced Godfathers and Sons, a film on Chicago Blues for Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
’s PBS series on Blues music.
In 2001, NARAL presented their Courageous Advocate Award to her for Soldiers in the Army of God, a film she produced and co-directed for HBO.
In the year 2000, she produced two films, Speak Truth to Power, a PBS special on human rights activists, and Twilight Los Angeles, Anna Deavere Smith’s performance film on the riots in South Central. For The Execution Machine, which also aired on HBO, she was able to secure unprecedented access to Death Row in Texas.
She was the supervising producer for the critically acclaimed Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
series, CIA: America’s Secret Warriors.
Her other HBO films include Mob Stories, Prisoners of the War on Drugs, Gladiator Days, Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock and its ten year follow-up Back in the Hood.
For Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers is an American journalist and public commentator. He served as White House Press Secretary in the United States President Lyndon B. Johnson Administration from 1965 to 1967. He worked as a news commentator on television for ten years. Moyers has had an extensive involvement with public...
she produced The Home Front, The Politics of Addiction, Oklahoma City: One Year Later, and three parts of his series on youth violence.
In addition to producing, she also shoots stylized film and video with small format cameras. She has captured some cinematic firsts, filming a gang drive-by shooting in Little Rock, Arkansas (HBO’s Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock) and inmates injecting drugs in prison (HBO’s Prisoners of the War on Drugs.)
She was the Associate Producer on the dramatic feature SLAM and shot all of its montage footage.
In 1988, during the press restrictions in South Africa, she launched South Africa Now, a weekly half-hour news program which commissioned pieces from inside South Africa for broadcast on Public Television, CNN World Report and ITN.
She is now working on a film for HBO about white collar workers who lost their jobs in the Fall of 2008 when the market crashed.
Al Levin
Alan M. Levin (February 28, 1926 - February 13, 2006) was a distinguished producer and recipient of journalism’s highest awards, including multiple Emmys.Levin’s TV work spanned over three decades, starting with PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
in the seventies and continuing with HBO through the nineties. He was one of Bill Moyers’ first producers at Public Television and one of Sheila Nevins’ most respected producers for the groundbreaking HBO series “America Undercover.” Levin appeared on the big screen in Protocols of Zion, a documentary film about the resurgence of anti-Semitism, directed by his son, Marc. The film was showcased at the Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released on HBO.
Levin was committed to the struggle for social justice and wanted to use media as a force for social change. He first came to national attention in 1970 with his controversial indictment of US foreign policy, “Who Invited U.S.?” The Nixon White House pressured the young Public Television service to cancel the broadcast but most stations defied the administration and the film was honored with the George Polk Award for best documentary. Levin went on to help renowned journalist Bill Moyers start his television career. They teamed up on a number of award-winning shows over the next fifteen years, including “Why Work?” “The Remarkable Yamato Family,” and “The Detroit Model.” He was senior producer on Moyers’ “The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis,” a history of covert CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
operations leading up to Iran Contra, which won the National Emmy Award for News and Documentary in 1988.
Levin was one of the original producers at WNET/13, where he worked on the public affairs show “The 51st State” and the innovative magazine show, “The American Dream Machine.” In 1979 he produced the Emmy-winning 6 part series, “The New Immigrants.” At Channel 13, he met a young producer, Sheila Nevins, who went on to become the head of HBO’s non-fiction programming and winner of the Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award. He teamed up with Nevins at HBO and with his son Marc, and their producing partner, Daphne Pinkerson, they made a series of films including “Gang War: Bangin in Little Rock” which won the CableACE Award for Best Documentary of 1994 and “Thug Life in D.C.”, which won the 1999 National Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special.
Levin was one of the first to report on the rise of America’s religious right in the 1980 film “Portrait of an American Zealot,” now part of the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
’s permanent collection. He also broke new ground in the 1986 Frontline special “Inside the Jury” which captured the first jury deliberation ever recorded for television. Since his army service in the Philippines at the end of World War II, he was fascinated by Asian culture. He was the senior producer on public television’s 10-part series, “The Pacific Century,” which won the 1993 duPont-Columbia Award and a gold medal at the Houston Film Festival.
Levin’s career came full circle when he returned to one of his favorite themes in the three-hour series for the Discovery Channel on the Central Intelligence Agency, “CIA: America’s Secret Warriors,” which won the duPont Columbia Silver Baton Award in 1998.
Al Levin was born in Brooklyn on February 28, 1926, the first child of Herman and Shirley Levin. He quickly showed signs of things to come when he won the baby of the year contest that summer at the Rock Island Illinois State Fair. He grew up in Flatbush Brooklyn with two younger sisters, Helen and Sue, and attended the prestigious NY City Townsend Harris High School. At age 16, he left for Wesleyan University and in 1944 he enlisted in the Army and was sent to an intensive Japanese language program at Yale University. He was shipped overseas at the very end of the war, and worked as a translator in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines.
After the war, he married Hannah Alexander, also from Brooklyn, and they quickly started a family. Marc was born in 1951, Nicole in 1952, Danielle in 1954, and Juliette in 1960. During the fifties, Al and Hannah became active in both the labor and civil rights movement. Al worked at the Jersey Central Railroad and Hannah at a Westinghouse factory, where they were both union organizers. They brought their three young children to the famous 1963 Washington, D.C. Civil Rights march where Martin Luther King gave his “I Have A Dream Speech.”
By the sixties they grew restless and moved on to pursue professional careers. Al started as a local journalist for AP covering the New Jersey state house, while Hannah got her Ph.D in psychology and became a professor and therapist. Levin then moved on to the New York Post in 1961 where he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his series on mob activity. In 1964, during a major NYC newspaper strike, Levin made his move into television. He became the assignment editor at WCBS-TV and then in 1965 he became a producer for the WABC-TV local evening news. He produced his first documentary in 1968, “Sleep: The Fantastic Third of your Life,” and won his first New York Emmy for best documentary and best writing.
Levin was married to Hannah Alexander Levin for 49 years until she passed away in December 1997. They had a legendary love affair which touched everyone who knew them.
Levin was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the women’s rights movement. He constantly encouraged his wife and three daughters to challenge the system. In addition to their four children, they had eight grandchildren. Al, as he was known to his friends and colleagues, was an extraordinary character, a unique mix of family man, political activist, teacher and humorist. His interests ranged from the political economy to Japanese stone gardens and exotic horticulture. He was a life long athlete and avid tennis player, who could still be seen well into his seventies in Maplewood’s parks working on his new serve.
He was revered by his four children and beloved by his two sisters.
Marc described his father as a “hope-aholic who saw the potential for good in almost everyone. He had a passion to make the world better and a rage toward injustice. But he had no malice or bitterness. Always curious, compassionate and optimistic, he was truly forever young.”
Film and television
| Year | Film | Studio | Festival | Award | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | Portrait of an American Zealot | Included in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent film collection | |||
| 1984 | Fall River Spectacle - “Inside Story” | PBS | Cine Golden Eagle Award | ||
| 1985 | The Wall Street Connection | WCBS TV Special | Emmy - Outstanding Documentary (nominated) | ||
| 1986 | Inside the Jury Room - “Frontline” | PBS | Blue Ribbon Award, American Film and Video Festival Monitor Award Best Public Affairs Program (nominated) and Best Editing (nominated) |
||
| 1988 | The Secret Government - The Constitution in Crisis: Bill Moyers Special | PBS | American Film and Video Festival | National Emmy Award for News and Documentary Blue Ribbon Award, American Film and Video Festival |
|
| 1989 | New York Non-Stop | WCBS Special | Emmy Award for Outstanding Writer (Non-News), Emmy for Outstanding Magazine Show (Non-News)(nominated) | ||
| 1991 | Blowback | ||||
| 1992 | The Last Party The Last Party (film) The Last Party is a documentary film co-written by and starring Robert Downey, Jr. Interviews and commentary cover moments of history during the 1992 presidential campaigns and investigate the issues of the day with Downey's particular brand of off-beat humor and satire... |
Triton/ Live Home Video | |||
| 1993 | Mob Stories | HBO | |||
| 1994 | Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock Gang War: Bangin' In Little Rock Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock often referred to as Gang Bangin' in Little Rock is a 1994 HBO documentary about street gangs in Little Rock, Arkansas.-Synopsis:... |
HBO | Houston International Film Festival | CableACE Award for Best Documentary, Silver Medal for Best Documentary, Houston International Film Festival |
|
| 1996 | Prisoners of the War on Drugs | HBO | |||
| 1997 | The Execution Machine: Texas Death Row | HBO | National Council on Crime and Delinquency PASS Award | ||
| 1997 | CIA: America's Secret Warriors | Discovery Channel | duPont Columbia Award, CableACE - Best Director (nominated) | ||
| 1998 | SLAM Slam (film) Slam is a 1998 independent film starring Saul Williams and Sonja Sohn. It tells the story of a young African-American man whose talent for poetry is hampered by his social background. It won the Grand Jury Prize for a Dramatic Film at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.- Synopsis :Raymond Joshua is a... |
Lions Gate | Sundance Festival, Festival de Cannes | Grand Jury Prize - Sundance Film Festival, Camera D'Or & Prix du Public - Cannes | |
| 1999 | White Boys | 20th Century Fox | |||
| 1999 | Thug Life in D.C. | HBO | Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special, National Council on Crime and Delinquency PASS Award, First Place Winner 32nd Annual Media Awards Competition, National Council on Family Relations | ||
| 2000 | Twilight Los Angeles | PBS | Sundance Film Festival, International Human Rights Film Festival at Lincoln Center | ||
| 2001 | Brooklyn Babylon | Lions Gate, Artisan Entertainment, Canal + | |||
| 2001 | Soldiers in the Army of God | HBO | Toronto International Film Festival | NARAL Courageous Advocate Award | |
| 2002 | Street Time | Columbia/TriStar | |||
| 2002 | Gladiator Days | HBO | |||
| 2002 | Street Time | Showtime | |||
| 2003 | Godfathers and Sons | PBS | |||
| 2004 | Heir to an Execution | HBO | Sundance Film Festival | Grand Jury Prize (nominated) - Sundance Film Festival | |
| 2005 | Back in the Hood | HBO | |||
| 2006 | Protocols of Zion | HBO/Cinemax and ThinkFilm | Sundance Film Festival | ||
| 2007 | Mr. Untouchable | HDNet and Magnolia Pictures | |||
| 2008 | Cadillac Records Cadillac Records Cadillac Records is a 2008 musical biopic written and directed by Darnell Martin. The film explores the musical era from the early 1940s to the late 1960s, chronicling the life of the influential Chicago-based record-company executive Leonard Chess, and the musicians who recorded for Chess... |
Sony Pictures | |||
| 2009 | Brick City | Sundance Channel | 2010 Peabody Award Winner, 2010 Golden Eagle Cine Award, Emmy - Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking (nominated), NAACP Image Award (nominated) | ||
| 2009 | Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags | HBO | Toronto International Film Festival | ||
| 2010 | Dirty Old Town | East End Film Festival - London, New York Independent Film and Video Festival - New York, Self Medicated Film Expo - Austin, Theatrical Release 2010 June- New York City, Basel Switzerland and Berlin, Germany | |||
| 2011 | Brick City 2 | Sundance Channel | |||
| 2011 | Triangle: Remembering the Fire | HBO | |||
| 2011 | Prayer for a Perfect Season | HBO/ HBO Sports | |||
| 2011 | Hard Times: Lost on Long Island | HBO | 2011 Hamptons International Film Festival | Audience Award for Best Documentary |
Affiliated companies
- Benjamin Productions
- Hudson River Films
- Jigsaw Productions
- Kaufman Films