Gail Dolgin (; April 4, 1945 – October 7, 2010) was an American filmmaker. She was nominated for the

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

for ''

Daughter from Danang ''Daughter from Đà Nẵng'' is a 2002 documentary film about an Amerasian, Heidi Bub, meeting her biological family in Da Nang, decades after being brought to the United States in 1975 during Operation Babylift at the end of the Vietnam War. P ...

'', and '' The Barber of Birmingham''.Obituary ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'', October 19, 2010, page AA6. ''

'' also won the

Sundance A Sun Dance is a Native American ceremony. Sun dance or Sundance may also refer to: Places ;Canada * Sundance, Calgary, Alberta, a neighbourhood * Sundance, Manitoba, a ghost town ;United States * Sundance, New Mexico, a census-designated pla ...

Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary.

Life and career

Dolgin was born to a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

Jewish Women's Archive: "Gail Dolgin Documentary filmmaker 1945 – 2010
retrieved July 20, 2014 the daughter of Israel and Diana Dolgin. She had three brothers: Kalmon Dolgin, Neil Dolgin, and Stuart Dolgin (deceased). Her grandfather Kalmon Dolgin founded a New York-based real estate brokerage firm which her father and uncle expanded into real estate development. It is now known as Kalmon Dolgin Affiliates, Inc. and run by her two brothers. She was raised in Great Neck, New York and earned a bachelor's degree in

art history Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today, ...

from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

and a master's in education from the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc Nike, Inc. ( or ) is a ...

. Interested in

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...

, she joined

Newsreel A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, inform ...

, 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 The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury ...

'', about San Francisco in the summer of 1967. She also collaborated filmmaker Vicente Franco on films. Her final project, a documentary film project on one of the unsung figures of the

civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

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, and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2012. Dolgin was a mentor to

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

filmmakers, hosting monthly gatherings at her home in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

to watch and discuss films with their directors via speakerphone, and served as a judge, board member and reviewer with the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,6 ...

Independent Television Service ITVS (Independent Television Service) is a service in the United States which funds and presents documentaries on public television through distribution by PBS and American Public Television, new media projects on the Internet, and the weekly s ...

, Berkeley Film Foundation and

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is the oldest Jewish film festival in the world, and currently the largest with a 2016 attendance figure of 40,000 at screenings in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, San Rafael, and Palo Alto. The three-week summe ...

. Dolgin died in 2010, aged 65, following a 10-year battle with

breast cancer Breast cancer is cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, or ...

. 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. She had one daughter, Amelia Nardinelli.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dolgin, Gail 1945 births 2010 deaths Sundance Film Festival award winners 20th-century American Jews Artists from Berkeley, California People from Great Neck, New York Deaths from breast cancer Deaths from cancer in California University of Pennsylvania alumni American documentary film producers University of Oregon alumni Film directors from California Film producers from New York (state) Film producers from California American women documentary filmmakers 21st-century American Jews 20th-century American women 21st-century American women