Biography

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Oren Jacoby is a director and producer of documentary films, including Constantine's Sword (2008), "Sister Rose's Passion" (2005), The Shakespeare Sessions (2003), Stage on Screen: The Topdog Diaries (2002), The Beatles Revolution (2000), and Sam Shepard: Stalking Himself (1998). He was a co-producer of the PBS series The Irish in America: Long Journey Home (1998).

Jacoby was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject for "Sister Rose's Passion" which also won Best Documentary Short Film at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival. He has written, directed, and produced award-winning films for two decades. His filmmaking has been recognized by the American Film Institute, the MacArthur Foundation, ITVS, Britain’s Royal Television Society, and by AMPAS. His films have appeared on the BBC, HBO Cinemax, PBS, National Geographic, VH-1, NHK (Japan), as well as Nokia, Verizon, and Human Rights Watch websites.

“The Topdog Diaries” about the 2002 Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, Suzan-Lori Parks, featured performances by Don Cheadle and Jeffrey Wright; “The Shakespeare Sessions” starred Kevin Kline, Cynthia Nixon, Liev Schreiber, and Charles S. Dutton. Jacoby also made: “Swingin’ with Duke”, starring Wynton Marsalis and “Master Thief” on the ‘art heist of the century’; and “Benny Goodman: Adventures in the Kingdom of Swing” for American Masters and “The Second Russian Revolution”, a behind the scenes investigation of the collapse of the USSR, called ‘the best BBC series of the decade’ by the London Independent.

Jacoby also wrote, produced and directed “The Return Ticket”, adapted from a short story by Anton Chekhov; “Ghosts of the Bayou”; “Idols of the Game”, featuring Michael Jordan;

He has won CINE Golden Eagles, the Royal Television Society (UK) journalism award, the MacArthur Golden Owl award, as well as grants from the American Film Institute, ITVS (The Independent Television Service) and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Jacoby has directed plays at Theater for the New City, the Williamstown Theater Festival, Ensemble Studio Theater, the West Bank Cafe and regional theaters, including new works by Richard Dresser, Quincy Long, and Franz Xavier Kroetz. He collaborated with Adrian Hall on an adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men”, with songs by Randy Newman, at the Dallas Theater Center and Trinity Rep. His stage adaptation of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man was performed in a reading at the 2004 Tribeca Theater Festival, in a co-production with the Classical Theater of Harlem. He wrote the screenplay for “Shores of a Dream" and is co-author with Forrest Stone of the original screenplay “Tarzan Brown” for the Oxford Film Company.

He is a graduate of Brown University and the Directing Program of the Yale School of Drama and is a native New Yorker. Tamar Jacoby, an American writer and academic, is his sister.

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