Mitchell Block: The Oscar-nominated documentary was 73 years old

Mitchell Block

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Mitchell Block, the Oscar-nominated documentarian and director behind such powerful films as Poster girl, Big mama And Certificate, He died. He was 73 years old.

Block died Thursday night of natural causes at his home in Eugene, Oregon, his daughter, Anja Block, said Hollywood Reporter.

Block was a consultant to Sheila Nevins at HBO for nearly a decade, and received an Academy Award nomination (shared with director Sarah Neeson) for producing the network’s television series. Poster girl (2010). The 38-minute film follows the struggles of Robin Murray, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from the Iraq War.

Earlier, he was executive producer of the Oscar-winning short documentary Big mama (2000), about Viola Dees, an 89-year-old woman fighting to retain custody of her rebellious grandson Walter.

Two other short documentaries he worked on, Certificate (2015), about the largest rape trial in the history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Gulag women (2018), about Soviet gulag survivors, was shortlisted for the Academy Awards.

Beginning in 1980, Block served for many years on the Academy’s Documentary Screening Committee, which selects films to be shortlisted for the Academy Awards.

In February 1990, a group of 45 directors filed a protest with the Academy after Michael Moore’s protest Roger and me, which was a critical and commercial success, did not receive a documentary nomination. They saw a conflict of interest in that three of the films that received a nomination were distributed by Block’s Direct Cinema Ltd. (final winner, Common Themes: Stories from the Quiltdistributed by Direct Cinema.)

Block denied any conflict of interest, saying: New York times He submits a conflict of interest statement to the Academy every year. “I am not allowed to vote, attend a screening, or participate in any discussion about any film in which I have a conflict of interest,” he said.

Born in Cincinnati, Block graduated from the Hun School of Princeton in 1968, received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, an MBA from Columbia University, and studied at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.

While at NYU, he wrote, directed and produced …no lies (1973), a 16-minute vérité-style film about rape and its aftermath that was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 2008. (In 2016, critics were polled by IndieWire Call it one of the 10 best short films of all time.)

He launched Direct Cinema in 1974, and the films released by the company have won 25 Oscars from 76 nominations.

He also co-created and executive produced Block Transporterset on the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, and its one-hour companion piece, Another day in paradise. Both aired in 2008 on PBS.

His CV included the year 2008 Stealing America: Vote by Vote2014 Southwest Double Winner vessel2018 The Lost City of the Monkey God2021 Surviving sex trafficking And 2023 popular.

He has been a consulting producer on the TCM documentary series Insightful The power of filmwhich aired this year.

Block has spoken at more than 50 colleges and universities around the world. Presented in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities in China; He taught classes in independent film production at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts from 1979 to 2017; He was a professor of documentary and film studies at the University of Oregon at the time of his death.

In addition to his daughter, survivors include his son, Peter. His wife, Joan, died in 2020.