Ferne Pearlstein

Ferne Pearlstein is a prize-winning cinematographer, writer, director, and editor whose work has won numerous awards and been screened and broadcast around the world. Her most recent documentary, The Last Laugh-which she directed, produced, photographed, and edited-had its world premiere at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, beginning a run of over a hundred festivals in the US and abroad, including Hot Docs, BFI London, Traverse City, IDFA, Rome, Jerusalem, San Francisco Jewish, Traverse City, Chicago International, and many others. Critically acclaimed with a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, The Last Laugh was released in theaters in March 2017 and had its broadcast premiere in April 2017 on PBS's Independent Lens series where it was runner-up for the 2016-17 Audience Award. Pearlstein's previous feature documentary Sumo East and West (2003)-which she also directed, produced, photographed, and edited-premiered at the Tribeca, Los Angeles, and Melbourne International Film Festivals, and was also shown nationwide on Independent Lens and broadcast around the world. Based in NYC, Pearlstein holds post-graduate degrees in documentary film and photography from Stanford University and the International Center of Photography. An acclaimed documentary director of photography with dozens of films to her credit, she won the Excellence in Cinematography Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival for her work on Ramona Diaz's Imelda, a feature documentary about Imelda Marcos. Pearlstein is one of only a handful of female cinematographers featured in Kodak's long-running "On Film" ad campaign in the pages of American Cinematographer magazine. Her other directing credits include co-director of Dita and the Family Business (PBS), and three short films including her debut Raising Nicholas, which premiered at the 2003 Sundance and San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals. Among her other credits are cinematographer on Academy Award winner Alex Gibney's segment of Freakonomics (Tribeca 2010); DP on three-time Academy Award nominee Deborah Dickson's Ruthie and Connie (HBO); and DP on The Voice of the Prophet (Sundance 2002) where she met her longtime collaborator and husband Robert Edwards. She was associate producer, editor, and 2nd unit director/DP on Edwards' 2006 feature Land of the Blind, starring Ralph Fiennes and Donald Sutherland, and producer and 2nd unit director/DP on his 2016 feature When I Live My Life Over Again, starring Christopher Walken and Amber Heard. Pearlstein and Edwards are currently executive producing a feature documentary on the Cola Wars for History's new "History 100" series, and directing a new independent documentary about the harrowing journey of Daniel Weinstock, a gifted photographer from Mexico who spent four years photographing inside psychiatric institutions in his home country only to be thrown into one of those institutions himself.