POSTHUMOUS LEGACY AWARD TO NANCY BUIRSKI
SUN, 12/3, 2:00pm, Tribute followed by screening of The Loving Story, 77 min
SAG HARBOR CINEMA
We at Hamptons Doc Fest – along with the rest of the documentary film community – were shocked and deeply saddened when we learned of the untimely passing of filmmaker Nancy Buirski on August 29.
A graduate of Adelphi University on Long Island, Nancy began her career as a photographer, and as the Foreign Picture Editor at The New York Times, her selection of Kevin Carter’s photo resulted in the paper winning its first ever Pulitzer Prize for feature photography in 1994.
Nancy channeled her creative, visual acumen and affinity for documentary storytelling when she founded the Full Frame Documentary Festival in North Carolina in 1998. As the Creative Director of the Festival, she championed the works of innovative filmmakers and built the festival into one of the premiere documentary events in the U.S.
When she transitioned from festival director to film director, Nancy did so with a bang. Between 2011 when she directed her first feature documentary, until her untimely death 12 short years later, she directed and produced six award-winning feature documentaries including a trilogy exploring racial injustice (The Loving Story, The Rape of Recy Taylor and A Crime on the Bayou). Her most recent film Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy premiered in 2022 at the prestigious Telluride and Venice film festivals.
Nancy was a force–a generous, warm and kind human being–unforgettable in so many ways. She built a legacy in many corners of the documentary world, as a filmmaker, festival director, mentor and friend. To paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay: "The presence of her absence is everywhere."
Hamptons Doc Fest is proud to honor Nancy Buirski with our first Legacy Award, presented to her sister Judith Cohen by Susan Margolin and Chris Hegedus. In Nancy’s honor, the festival will screen the Emmy and Peabody award-winning documentary, The Loving Story (PG 25) her first feature as writer, director and producer, as well as the short film Daughter of Mine (PG 27), where she acted as Executive Producer and mentor to the filmmaker.