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History of Documentary Film

Biography

Joseph Dorman is an award-winning filmmaker whose work has appeared on PBS, CBS, Discovery Channel and CNN. He has recently completed Laughing in the Darkness, a film biography of the great Jewish author Sholom Aleichem.

His Peabody award-winning theatrical feature Arguing the World (1998) was short-listed for the Academy Awards. Mr. Dorman also wrote the feature documentaries Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (2004) and The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Journey. The latter was named the best documentary of 2001 by the National Board of Review.

His book, Arguing the World, The New York Intellectuals in Their Own Words, based on his film was published by the Free Press. Previously he has taught the history of documentary at Columbia University’s School of Journalism and was   filmmaker-in-residence at Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies in 2009-2010.

He has also twice been nominated for Emmy Awards for outstanding cultural and public affairs programming. In 1999 Mr. Dorman was invited to give Harvard University’s annual William E. Massey Sr. Lecture in the history of American Civilization.

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