JEFFREY FRIEDMAN

Jeffrey grew up in New York City, where he began his show business career acting professionally off-Broadway at age 12.

He began his film career apprenticing to some of the industry’s most respected filmmakers, on the Academy Award®-winning documentary feature Marjoe (edited by Larry Silk, 1972), and on William Friedkin's classic The Exorcist (1973). He assisted the legendary editor Dede Allen on director Arthur Penn’s segment for Visions of Eight, about the ‘72 Munich Olympics (1973), and editor Thelma Schoonmaker on Martin Scorcese's Raging Bull (Academy Award®, Film Editing, 1980). 

Jeffrey became a full-fledged editor on the NBC prime-time documentary series Lifeline (1978). He was associate editor on the Disney feature Never Cry Wolf, directed by Carroll Ballard (1983). He has edited numerous documentaries for television, starting with the PBS documentary Faces Of the Enemy (1987), which he also co-directed. His subsequent editing credits include the Oscar-winning documentary feature Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt (1989) and two Oscar-nominated documentary shorts — Kings Point (2013) and End Game (2018). (See Jeffrey’s full list of editing credits here.)

In 1979, Jeffrey moved to San Francisco, where he began began working with Rob Epstein as a consultant on The Times of Harvey Milk (1984). In 1987 Jeffrey and Rob formed their production company Telling Pictures and began working as a filmmaking team.

Jeffrey and Rob co-produced, directed, and edited Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt (HBO, 1989), which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. They followed this with a verité road movie, Where Are We? (Our Trip Through America) (Sundance premiere, 1991),

They then produced and directed – and Jeffrey co-edited – the landmark documentary feature The Celluloid Closet (Sony Pictures Classics, HBO, 1995). The Celluloid Closet premiered at the New York Film Festival, followed by the Toronto International Film Festival, and Sundance, where it won the Freedom of Expression Award. It went on to win an Emmy Award for directing (and another for Bobby McFerrin’s original score), as well as a Peabody Award.

Their next film, Paragraph 175 (HBO, 2000), premiered at Sundance, where it won the Documentary Jury Prize for Directing, followed by the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize from the International Federation of Film Critics.

HOWL (2010) was the the team's first scripted feature, an experimental genre hybrid they wrote, co-produced, and directed. Starring James Franco, David Strathairn, Jon Hamm, Jeff Daniels, Treat Williams, and Mary-Louise Parker, HOWL premiered opening night at Sundance, followed by the Berlin and London International Film Festivals, and was released domestically by Oscilloscope and internationally by The Match Factory (National Board of Review Freedom of Expression Award).

Their next dramatic venture was directing Lovelace, starring Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone, Bobby Cannavale, Chris Noth, Juno Temple, and James Franco. Lovelace premiered at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals (2013). 

Jeffrey and Rob’s documentary feature And the Oscar Goes To (2014) premiered on Turner Classic Movies and aired on CNN. Their documentary short End Game (Netflix, 2018) was nominated for an Academy Award. State of Pride (YouTube Originals, 2019) premiered at South by Southwest. Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (CNN Films, 2019) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and won a Grammy Award for Best Musical Film. In 2023 the team produced and directed Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and streams on HBO MAX; and Música!, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival).

Jeffrey and Rob have had career retrospectives at Film at Lincoln Center, the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Taipei International Film Festival in Taiwan, the Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montreal, and the Pink Apple Film Festival in Zurich. TCM programmed an evening of their films in 2021.

They received the George Gund III Craft of Cinema Award from the San Francisco Film Society in recognition of distinguished service to cinema, and career achievement awards from Outfest and the Provincetown International Film Festival. 

Jeffrey has taught in the graduate program at Stanford University and at California College of the Arts. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He is co-author of The Art of Nonfiction Movie Making, published by Praeger in 2012.