| Gail Dolgin | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 4, 1945 Great Neck, New York, U.S. |
| Died | October 7, 2010 (aged 65) Berkeley, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | American documentary filmmaker |
Gail Dolgin (April 4, 1945 – October 7, 2010) was an American Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker for Daughter from Danang.[1] The film also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary.
Born in Brooklyn and raised in Great Neck, Dolgin earned a bachelor's degree in art history from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's in education from the University of Oregon. Interested in photography, she joined Newsreel, an activist film collective in New York, where she decided to pursue filmmaking professionally. In addition to Daughter From Danang, Dolgin's notable credits include Cuba Va about Cuban youth after the revolution, and Summer of Love, about San Francisco in the summer of 1967. She also collaborated filmmaker Vicente Franco on films.[2]
Her final project, a documentary film project on one of the unsung figures of the African American civil rights movement entitled The Barber of Birmingham was completed posthumously, co-directed and produced with still photographer Robin Fryday. The film premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, three months after Dolgin's death.[3]
Dolgin was a mentor to Bay Area filmmakers, hosting monthly gatherings at her home in Berkeley, California to watch and discuss films with their directors via speakerphone, and served as a judge, board member and reviewer with the Sundance Film Festival, Independent Television Service, Berkeley Film Foundation and San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.[2]
Dolgin died in 2010, aged 65, following a 10-year battle with breast cancer.[1][2] She was candid about her illness, speaking about it during her 2002 acceptance speech at the Sundance Film Festival for Daughter from Danang and describing how she had found the courage to continue making films.[4]