Jeff Zimbalist

Jeffrey Leib Nettler Zimbalist (born August 15, 1978 in Northampton, Massachusetts) is an American documentary filmmaker. Together with Matt Mochary, Zimbalist won the Best Emerging Filmmaker Award at the 2005 TriBeCa Film Festival for his work on Favela Rising. The film follows the life of Anderson Sa through the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in his attempt to use Afro-Reggae music to provide a positive outlet for the residents of a dangerous environment. The film was distributed by Thinkfilm and HBO Documentary Films in North America and the Institute of Contemporary Art in the UK. Favela Rising also garnered a 2006 Emmy Nomination for Zimbalist and Mochary, was named as the 2005 International Documentary Association's Film of the Year, was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2005, and won 36 International Film Festival Awards, including Best Documentary at Sydney and Leeds International Film Festivals.

As a director, cinematographer and editor, Zimbalist's work has been broadcast on HBO, PBS, Channel 4, Sundance Channel, BET, BBC, and WE television, while his films have been featured at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. He has produced educational and promotional films for over a dozen clients throughout the United States, in South Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as provided media consulting services to the UNDP and various international nonprofit service organizations. Jeff teaches at the New York Film Academy and the Maine Photographic Workshops. He is a Massachusetts State Cultural Council Fellow and a 2006 Ford Foundation Grantee.

In 2010, ESPN Films released "The Two Escobars" which Jeff directed and produced with his brother Michael Zimbalist. Jeff also was credited as the director of photography and editor. The film was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival, and the Los Angeles Film Festival and was called "masterful" by The Hollywood Reporter, a "knockout documentary" by Variety and "one of the best sports documentaries ever made" by Bill Simmons.

Jeff is the son of prominent sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, and is often credited as having given his father the idea to investigate sports from an academic perspective.

External links

• Jeff Zimbalist at IMDb
• Favela Rising at IMDb
• Favela Rising
• The Two Escobars

Interviews

• Cinematical
• NEFilm
• Brown Alumni Magazine