Jim Klein
Introduction (2-3 lines)
Jim Klein’s pioneering documentary films have garnered two Academy Award nominations, national PBS broadcasts, screenings at top festivals, reviews in the New York Times and Village Voice, and been purchased for the permanent collections of hundreds of university libraries. Films he has edited have garnered Prime Time Emmy Awards and Academy Award Nominations, been nationally broadcast on POV, Independent Lens and HBO, and won awards at leading international film festivals.
Jim Klein has been an active member of the independent film movement since the early 1970s. He is a founder of the pioneering film distribution co-operative New Day Films and active in the filmmaker organizations that shaped the field. With partner, Julia Reichert, he created such innovative documentaries as Growing Up Female, the first documentary about women from a feminist perspective, which was selected for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress; Academy Award nominee Union Maids, one of the first oral history films; and Academy Award nominee Seeing Red, a challenging film about American communists. His films Letter to the Next Generation and Taken for a Ride both had national broadcasts on PBS’s flagship POV series.
Klein has also had a distinguished career as an editor, with principal editing credits on several dozen films, including the Prime Time Emmy winning A Lion In The House, a two night PBS special about kids and their families fighting cancer; Academy Award nominee The Last Truck, about the closing of a GM truck factory; and Scout’s Honor, a film about anti-gay discrimination within the Boy Scouts.
Klein has edited five fiction feature films, including The Speed of Life, which won a Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival, and The Dream Catcher, which won the Best Director award at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival.
He is also a retired Professor in the School of Theatre, Dance and Film at Wright State University.
