Jeremy Kagan
Filmmaker
California
Jeremy Kagan is an internationally recognized director/writer/producer of feature films and television, and renown teacher. His most recent narrative feature SHOT is about what one bullet does to many lives. Some of his other feature credits include the box-office hit HEROES, the political thriller THE BIG FIX, THE CHOSEN from Chaim Potok’s classic novel (2 time Grand Prize winner), and THE JOURNEY OF NATTY GANN (Gold Prize Moscow Film Festival). Among his many television shows are KATHERINE: the Making of an American Revolutionary, and HBO’s CONSPIRACY: THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 8 (ACE Award for Best Dramatic Special). His film ROSWELL,THE UFO CONSPIRACY garnered a Golden Globe nomination and he directed the pilot for the popular series DR. QUINN: MEDICINE WOMAN.
Other television films include, for Showtime COLOR OF JUSTICE about racism, BOBBIE’S GIRL about a lesbian couple, and CROWN HEIGHTS about the 1991 riots in Brooklyn which won the NAACP Outstanding Television Movie Award and the Humanitas Award for “affirming the dignity of every person.” Jeremy has won an EMMY for Dramatic Series Directing, and directed West Wing and Steven Spielberg’s Taken. He has made films for many NGOs like The Doe Fund, which is the most successful program in America helping the homeless, and Bioneers, which organizes leaders in ecology and social justice.
Jeremy is a full tenured professor at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California and has created the Change Making Media Lab — which has made projects on cancer prevention, ADHD, and world wide medical volunteer efforts. He has served as the Artistic Director of Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, and is Chairperson of Special Projects for the Directors Guild of America serving its 18,000 members with cultural and educational events. His books DIRECTORS CLOSE UP, Vol. 1 & 2, are published by Scarecrow Press, and his eTextbook Keys to Directing is used world wide.
A Graduate Fellow of the American Film Institute, he has an M.F.A. from NYU and a B.A. from Harvard University. He has taught master seminars on filmmaking in Hong Kong, Hamburg, Hanoi, France, Lebanon, Israel, Ireland, Moscow, Shanghai and India. His illustrated ebook on his near-death experience called MY DEATH: A Personal Guidebook is published by Balboa Press.
