Emily Kunstler
Encyclopedia
Emily Kunstler is an activist and a documentary filmmaker. Kunstler grew up in New York City's West Village neighborhood.

Education

Kunstler attended the Little Red School House (New York, New York) and the United Nations International School
United Nations International School
The United Nations International School is a private international school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 by families who worked for or were associated with the United Nations. The school was founded to provide an international education, while preserving its students' diverse cultural...

. She graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts
Tisch School of the Arts
Tisch School of the Arts is one of the 15 schools that make up New York University ....

 with a BFA and Honors in Film and Video in 2000. She previously attended Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...

, in Poughkeepsie, NY where she focused in Film and Africana Studies. She was a studio art fellow with the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

 in 2004.

Family

Kunstler is the daughter of left-wing radical lawyers William Kunstler
William Kunstler
William Moses Kunstler was an American self-described "radical lawyer" and civil rights activist, known for his controversial clients...

 and Margaret Ratner Kunstler and is the sister of lawyer and filmmaker Sarah Kunstler
Sarah Kunstler
Sarah Kunstler is a documentary filmmaker and lawyer.- Education :Kunstler graduated from Yale University with a BA in Photography in 1998, and from Columbia Law School with a JD in 2004.- Family :...

, Karin Kunstler Goldman and Jane Drazek. Kunstler resides in Brooklyn, NY with her partner, filmmaker Sebastian Doggart
Sebastian Doggart
Sebastian Doggart is an English and American producer, director, writer, translator, cinematographer and human rights activist.-Education:...

, and their daughter, Alma Leonora Doggart Kunstler.

Off Center Media

In 1999, Emily Kunstler co-founded Off Center Media with her sister Sarah Kunstler
Sarah Kunstler
Sarah Kunstler is a documentary filmmaker and lawyer.- Education :Kunstler graduated from Yale University with a BA in Photography in 1998, and from Columbia Law School with a JD in 2004.- Family :...

. Off Center is a documentary production company that exposes injustice in the criminal justice system through the creation and circulation of media. At Off Center Media, Emily has produced, directed and edited a number of short documentaries, including Tulia, Texas: Scenes from the Drug War (2003), which won Best Documentary Short at the Woodstock Film Festival
Woodstock Film Festival
The Woodstock Film Festival is an American film festival that was begun in 1999. The festival was first conceived as a part of the Woodstock '99 Music and Arts Festival, with movies being screened as part of that event.-History:...

, and was instrumental in winning exoneration for 35 wrongfully-convicted people in the small town of Tulia, Texas
Tulia, Texas
Tulia is a city in, and county seat of, Swisher County, Texas, United States. The population was 5,117 at the 2000 census; in the 2005 census estimate, it had fallen to 4,714. The city is at the junction of U.S. Route 87 and Texas State Highway 86, approximately two miles east Interstate 27...

, and Getting Through to the President (2004), which has aired on the Sundance Channel, Current TV
Current TV
Current TV, or Current, is a media company led by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt. Comcast owns a ten percent stake of Current's parent company, Current Media LLC....

, and Channel Thirteen/WNET
WNET
WNET, channel 13 is a non-commercial educational public television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey. With its signal covering the New York metropolitan area, WNET is a primary station of the Public Broadcasting Service and a primary provider of PBS programming...

.

Other notable Off Center Media projects include A Pattern of Exclusion: The Trial of Thomas Miller-El (2002), a documentary about racism at the trial of Miller-El, who had been on death row in Texas since 1985, see Supreme Court case Miller-El v. Dretke
Miller-El v. Dretke
Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231 , is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that clarified the constitutional limitations on the use by prosecutors of peremptory challenges and of the Texas procedure appropriately termed the "jury shuffle."-Factual background:Thomas Miller-El was...

; The Norfolk Four: A Miscarriage of Justice (2006), about four young men in Norfolk, Virginia, who falsely confessed to a rape-murder that they did not commit, see the Norfolk Four Website; and Executing the Insane: The Case of Scott Panetti (2007), see Supreme Court case Panetti v. Quarterman
Panetti v. Quarterman
Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930 , is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, ruling that criminal defendants sentenced to death may not be executed if they do not understand the reason for their imminent execution, and that once the state has set an execution date death-row...

. These films have contributed to campaigns to secure pardons, stay executions and convince decision makers to reopen cases.

Emily Kunstler completed a documentary about her father entitled William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. The film is a co-production of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and aired on the award-winning PBS series P.O.V.
P.O.V.
POV is a Public Broadcasting Service Public television series which features independent nonfiction films. POV is a cinema term for "point of view"....

 on Jun 22, 2010 as that year's season opener. The film was an official selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

 and has since screened at over 35 festivals. Arthouse Films released the film theatrically in over 25 cities in North America in November 2009, to considerable critical acclaim. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/disturbing_the_universe/

It also received a 2008 grant from the Foundation for Jewish Culture's Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film.

Other Film/Video Work

Kunstler is currently the video archivist and co-founder of the Kent State Truth Tribunal. The Kent State Truth Tribunal was co-founded by Laurel Krause, whose sister Allison Krause
Allison Krause
Allison B. Krause was an honor student at Kent State University, Ohio, when she was shot and killed by the Ohio Army National Guard in the Kent State Massacre, while protesting the invasion of Cambodia and the presence of the National Guard on the Kent State campus...

 was killed by National Guardsmen on May 4th, 1970. The Tribunal works to help to heal those involved, establish cause and effect, and shed light on responsibility for the events that transpired on May 4, 1970. From May 1 - May 4, 2010 the Tribunal will streamed live at michaelmoore.com and the archive will be housed at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives
The Tamiment Library is a research library at New York University that documents radical and left history, with strengths in the histories of communism, socialism, anarchism, the New Left, the Civil Rights Movement, and utopian experiments. The Robert F. Wagner Archives, which is also housed in...

. Truth Tribunals are currently being planned for both San Francisco and New York for Summer/Fall 2010.

Kunstler worked as a video producer for Democracy Now!
Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...

, an independent national television and radio news program that broadcasts on the Pacifica Radio
Pacifica Radio
Pacifica Radio is the oldest public radio network in the United States. It is a group of five independently operated, non-commercial, listener-supported radio stations that is known for its progressive/liberal political orientation. It is also a program service supplying over 100 affiliated...

 Network and on public access and satellite television.

Kunstler worked for the Documentary Campaign where she worked on Alison Maclean
Alison Maclean
Alison Maclean is a Canadian film director of music videos, short films, television , commercials and feature films...

’s Persons of Interest (Sundance, 2004). Kunstler's short film Getting Through to the President (2004) was produced in association with the Documentary Campaign.

Kunstler has also been a videographer for the National Lawyers Guild
National Lawyers Guild
The National Lawyers Guild is an advocacy group in the United States "dedicated to the need for basic and progressive change in the structure of our political and economic system . ....

(NLG) traveling with NLG delegations to the West Bank, Lebanon, and Venezuela as part of fact finding missions.

Awards

Emily Kunstler and her sister Sarah Kunstler
Sarah Kunstler
Sarah Kunstler is a documentary filmmaker and lawyer.- Education :Kunstler graduated from Yale University with a BA in Photography in 1998, and from Columbia Law School with a JD in 2004.- Family :...

 were recipients of the L'Oreal
L'Oréal
The L'Oréal Group is the world's largest cosmetics and beauty company. With its registered office in Paris and head office in the Paris suburb of Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France, it has developed activities in the field of cosmetics...

 Paris Women of Worth "Vision" Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

 and Best New Documentary Filmmaker(s) Award at Michael Moore
Michael Moore
Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...

's Traverse City Film Festival
Traverse City Film Festival
The Traverse City Film Festival is an annual film festival held every late July through early August in Traverse City, Michigan. The festival was created as an annual event in 2005 to help “save one of America's few indigenous art forms—the cinema." The event was co-founded by Michael Moore, the...

(2009).

Trivia

In 1989, at age 11, Emily Kunstler appeared on the PBS children's show Reading Rainbow
Reading Rainbow
Reading Rainbow is an American children's television series aired by PBS from June 6, 1983 until November 10, 2006 that encouraged reading among children. The award-winning public television series garnered over 200 broadcast awards, including scores of Emmy Awards, many for "Outstanding Children's...

 with LeVar Burton
LeVar Burton
Levardis Robert Martyn Burton, Jr. , professionally known as LeVar Burton, is an American actor, director, producer and author who first came to prominence portraying Kunta Kinte in the 1977 award-winning ABC television miniseries Roots, based on the novel by Alex Haley...

on an episode called "Mummies Made in Egypt," doing a book review for Robert B. Pickering's "I Can Be an Archaeologist."

Articles


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Radio


External links

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