Dawn Logsdon
Introduction (2-3 lines)
Dawn Logsdon is an award-winning documentary director, producer and editor based in San Francisco. Her career has been dedicated to making films about civic issues and city life, particularly at the neighborhood level in San Francisco and in her hometown New Orleans.
Dawn is currently producing and directing Free for All: Inside the Public Library, a multi-platform project about America’s public libraries. Her previous work has won Emmy, Peabody, and Sundance awards and been nominated for an Academy award.
She directed and produced Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans (2008), which premiered at the Tribeca International Film Festival. It went on to win the SFIFF Golden Gate Award for Best Documentary and was a PBS Black History Month feature presentation three years in a row. Dawn co-directed and edited Big Joy (2013) (about the pioneering queer San Francisco filmmaker and poet James Broughton); and Steel and Velvet (2008) (about Lindy Boggs, the first woman elected to Congress from Louisiana). Short films that Dawn has produced and directed include Tomboy (about early transgender identity) which was exhibited at the Whitney Biennial and aired on PBS.
Dawn’s editing credits include the Sundance Award-winning Paragraph 175 (about queer survivors of Nazi persecution) by Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Freidman, Academy Award-nominated Weather Underground (about the anti-Vietnam War group)by Sam Green; Emmy and IDA award-winning Have You Heard from Johannesburg? (about the international anti-apartheid movement) by Connie Field; the Emmy and Peabody award-winning The Castro; Jenni Olson’s The Royal Road, which premiered at Sundance 2015; and PBS American Masters' Art of Craft.
Dawn received a BA in Philosophy from UC Berkeley. Her honors include a Soros OSI Media Fellowship, California Arts Council Artist Residency, BAVC Media Maker Award, Djerassi Artist Residency, Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship, New Orleans Contemporary Art Center Artist Fellowship, and the New Orleans Arts Council Award.
