Lisa Leeman believes that strong narrative and character-driven films can change the world, one story at a time. She considers her longitudinal portraits a form of cinematic activism. She has produced, directed, written & edited award-winning feature & short documentaries for over thirty years. Her work mainly focuses on two areas – what she calls ‘sideways social-issue films – intimate character-driven stories that illuminate contemporary social issues by how they directly affect people’s lives, as well as films about faith and spirituality.
Leeman is a MacDowell Fellow and and recently completed a Bogliasco Fellowship, both in support of her current doc, WALK BY ME, which she is currently shooting and editing. WALK BY ME is a follow-up and response to her groundbreaking first film, METAMORPHOSIS, which won Sundance’s Filmmaker’s Trophy in 1990 and garnered top broadcast ratings on POV/PBS. In the new film, Lisa and animation artist Gabi reunite twenty-five years after Leeman profiled the evangelical artist’s gender transition in METAMORPHOSIS. Now middle-aged, the two artists rekindle a lapsed friendship as they reckon with the past and face uncertain futures. Filmed over nine years as they navigate a series of crossroads in their sixties, WALK BY ME weaves past and present to explore aging and friendship, art and resiliency, faith and gender — and the blurred boundaries in documentary filmmaking.
Roger Ebert named Leeman’s ONE LUCKY ELEPHANT as one of the best documentaries of 2011. Other producing & directing credits include AWAKE; CRAZY WISDOM; OUT OF FAITH; and WHO NEEDS SLEEP (with Haskell Wexler).
Lisa believes biography is a powerful way to cinematically explore spirituality. She co-wrote/co-directed/co-produced the award-winning feature documentary AWAKE which screened in U.S. theaters for 48 weeks, and in 17 countries. AWAKE is one of only 17 films directed by women in the 250 top-grossing films of 2014. Leeman produced CRAZY WISDOM (directed by Johanna Demetrakas), a portrait of the renowned Tibetan meditation master, Chogyam Trungpa, and is developing a narrative non-fiction series on the history of yoga and Vedanta in the United States, inspired by the books American Veda and The Subtle Body.
Lisa produced and directed a series of #MeToo PSAs with an all-women crew of faculty and students at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, where she is a tenured professor. Interview with Lisa here. Lisa has edited award-winning documentaries for the acclaimed filmmakers Stanley Nelson; Renee Tajima-Pena; Michele Ohayon; Micha Peled; Lourdes Portillo.
Leeman is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, WGA West, Alliance of Women Directors, and the Documentary Producers Alliance, where she co-chairs the Ethics subcommittee. She has served as a judge at the Sundance Film Festival and as the president of the International Documentary Association. Her work has been supported by Sundance, ITVS, Catapult Film Fund, California Humanities Council, the Producers Guild, the American Film Institute, and has screened in theaters, festivals, and broadcasts around the world, including IDFA, PBS, HBO, ARTE, Channel 4. Lisa has served as Creative Advisor for Film Independent’s Global Media Makers documentary cohorts, and for the American Film Showcase, she has taught master classes on documentary filmmaking in Azerbaijan, China, Jordan, Malawi, Portugal, the Republic of Georgia and the West Bank.
