Kirby Dick is an Academy Award-nominated documentary director, one of the most prolific and eclectic filmmakers working in the field today. Five of his films have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and have screened at the Venice, Berlin, Toronto, San Sebastian, Locarno, Edinburgh, Yamagata Film Festivals and many others.

Dick is known for making intensely personal psychological profiles as well as for undertaking groundbreaking undercover investigations. His earlier work focused on subjects and issues that have traditionally been taboo, such as death, sadomasochism, and sexual abuse, and he has been compared to the photographer Diane Arbus in the way he prefers “to open the camera lens to the pained, the freakish and the inexplicable that exists on the margins of everyday life."¹ More recently, his films have focused on important political and social issues, using novel undercover investigative techniques to expose the hypocrisy and damage caused by some of the United States’ most powerful institutions.

His latest film, OUTRAGE (2009) is a searing indictment of the hypocrisy of closeted politicians who actively campaign against the LGBT community they covertly belong to. Boldly revealing the hidden lives of some of our nation’s most powerful policy-makers, the film probes deeply into the psychology of their double lifestyle and examines the media's complicity in keeping their secrets.

AT THE MPAA HEADQUARTERS IN LOS ANGELES (2006)

Prior to that, he directed THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED (2006), a breakthrough investigation into the highly secretive Motion Picture of America (MPAA) film ratings system that compelled the MPAA to make long overdue changes to how it rates films. The documentary is considered a landmark film because of its extensive application of the fair use doctrine and has spurred resurgence in the use of fair use material among documentary filmmakers in this country.

In 2005, Dick was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary for TWIST OF FAITH (2004), the story of a man confronting the trauma of his past sexual abuse by a Catholic priest, only to find his decision shatters his relationships with his family, community, and his faith. The film won the Audience Award at the 2005 Amnesty International Film Festival.

Other recent films for HBO Documentary films include THE END (2004), a moving and profound chronicle about five terminally ill patients and their families in a Los Angeles hospice program, and SHOWGIRLS: GLITZ & ANGST (2003), an uncompromising look at the lives of Las Vegas dancers and their conflicts with their producers and as they work to mount a new Las Vegas show.

In 2002, Dick directed (with Amy Ziering) DERRIDA (2002), a complex portrait of the world-renowned French philosopher Jacques Derrida, which won the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival.

The previous year, Dick directed CHAIN CAMERA (2001), a riveting portrait of contemporary urban teenage life. Employing a radically experimental film technique, he distributed ten video cameras to students at a Los Angeles high school and allowed those cameras to circulate like chain letters through the student body for entire years. Editing the film from the more than 700 hours of footage, the film foreshadows the onset of YouTube, blogs, and other DIY media.

1996.

In 1997, he directed the internationally acclaimed SICK: THE LIFE & DEATH OF BOB FLANAGAN, SUPERMASOCHIST (1997), which won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Grand Prize at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The film also earned an IFP/West Spirit Award Nomination and an International Documentary Association Nomination for Best Feature Documentary of 1998 as well as receiving dozens of mentions as one of Top Ten Films Of The Year from prominent journalists.

The previous year, Dick wrote the screenplay for the fictional film GUY (1996). Produced for Polygram Pictures and starring Vincent D’Onofrio and Hope Davis, the film is about a woman who randomly selects a passing man to follow non-stop with her video camera. An intense examination of voyeurism and the complex relationship between a filmmaker and her subject, the film premiered at the 2006 Venice Film Festival where it received a standing ovation.

Dick also directed the cult film I AM NOT A FREAK (1987), about the lives and experiences of five people with extreme physical anomalies, and PRIVATE PRACTICES: THE STORY OF A SEX SURROGATE (1985), which was awarded Best Documentary at both the USA Film Festival and the Atlanta film festival. Several years earlier he directed (with Jeff Balsmeyer) MEN WHO ARE MEN (1981), an acclaimed experimental 30-minute film shot on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

¹Ryan Stewart, Cinematical 8.30.2006

FILMOGRAPHY

CHAIN CAMERA PICTURES