Lee Hirsch

Lee Hirsch was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and attended the Putney School in Vermont, Hampshire College and the New York Film Academy. He is the founder, director and producer of the Local Voices for Obama project, a series of ads featuring Obama supporters in small towns in swing states speaking candidly about their support of this candidate. Winner of Best Presidential Ad and Best Independent Expenditure at the 2009 Reed Awards, judged by political luminaries including George Stephanopolous, Joe Trippi and Christine Todd Whitman. A documentary filmmaker, Lee Hirsch's debut feature film, Amandla! a Revolution in Four Part Harmony, chronicles the history of the South African anti-apartheid struggle through a celebration of its musical heroes. This film was released to acclaim, winning the Audience and Freedom of Expression Awards at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as one of the five Emmy awards it was nominated for, among many other honors. Financed by the Ford Foundation and HBO, Amandla! (which means power in Zulu) was theatrically released in the United States by Artisan/Lions Gate. The film has sold worldwide with additional cinema releases in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. An accompanying soundtrack was released on Dave Matthews' ATO record label. Recently, Hirsch directed and produced for the Discovery Channel's series, Next World, a multi-part series that examines what the world will look like in 30 years. Hirsch directed the episode "future metro" as well; he directed various segments throughout the series dealing with the future of fun, trains, automobiles and a variety of other subjects. In 2007, Hirsch also directed and produced the History Channel special, Act of Honor. The program paints an intimate portrait of a Mexican-American family dealing with the tragic death of their son, Rafael Peralta, who threw himself on a live grenade and saved the lives of several Marines in his unit during the battle of Fallujah. Act of Honor traces Peralta's extraordinary journey from Tijuana, Mexico to San Diego to the streets of Iraq. A truly unique immigration and war story, the film has been applauded in reviews by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and other major papers. Hirsch is also an established director of music videos, his most recent being a narrative shot on location in Zanzibar for John Legend's song Show Me, which was nominated for a 2008 NAACP Image award. He is also the recipient of the Best Video of the Year award from the National Television and Video Association of South Africa for his work with Bongo Maffin. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.