Irv Drasnin

Irv Drasnin's career in documentary filmmaking and broadcast journalism includes 35 years at CBS News and PBS, covering a wide range of topics both foreign and domestic, contemporary and historical. Among his 31 films are The Guns of Autumn, Apartheid, Who Has a Right to Rhodesia, Inside the Union, The Radio Priest, Forever Baseball and a chronicle of modern China beginning with Misunderstanding China (1972), Shanghai (1974), Looking for Mao (1983), China After Tiananmen (1992) and The Revolutionary (2011). His documentary awards include the Directors Guild, the Writers Guild (twice, seven nominations), DuPont-Columbia (twice), the Emmy, the Christopher (twice), and the American Film and Video Blue Ribbon (twice). For the CBS Evening News his assignments covered a wide range of major news events of the 1960's including the civil rights movement. He was the producer of CBS News coverage in Selma, Alabama (March, 1965). For the American Academy of Achievement, he has interviewed more than a hundred notable recipients from the arts and literature, the sciences, business, politics and sports. They include: Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, Ehud Barak, Justice Anthony Kennedy, James Michener, Edward Albee, Lawrence Wright, Maya Lin, George Lucas, James Earl Jones, B.B. King, John Wooden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Peyton Manning and Willie Mays. Mr. Drasnin taught the master's film program at Stanford University and holds a MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard University. He has a BA in political science from UCLA, where he was student body president and editor of The Daily Bruin. He is married to Xiaoyan Zhao, a writer and expert in global communication research.