Three-time Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker, director, editor, story consultant, photographer with a passion for telling stories about real people, and real issues.
Deborah Dickson’s over thirty documentary films have premiered at Sundance, Berlin and many other film festivals and have been awarded Emmys, the DuPont-Columbia Award, the Peabody Award and Ace awards.
RUTHIE AND CONNIE: Every Room in the House premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2001 and won over 12 awards at festivals worldwide, including best documentary at the Seattle Film Festival and the Nashville Film Festival. It was broadcast on HBO/Cinemax.
FRANCES STELOFF: Memoirs of a Bookseller A portrait of the woman who founded the Gotham Book Mart, center for avant-garde literature since 1920 was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary short in 1988 after a successful festival run at the US festival, Berlin Film Festival, Festival di Popoli, Munich Film Festival. Edinburgh Film Festival, among others. later it was broadcast on WNET/PBS.
THE EDUCATION OF GORE VIDAL premiered at Sundance in 2002 and was broadcast as part of the award winning series, American Masters on PBS.
LALEE’S KIN: Legacy of Cotton (with Susan Froemke and Al Maysles) premiered at Sundance in 2000 and was nominated for an Academy Award and a Spirit Award and won an Alfred I. DuPont Award for Excellence in Journalism. It was broadcast on HBO.
She produced the acclaimed 10-part series CARRIER and directed the companion feature documentary, ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE.
STORIES FROM THE LIGHTHOUSE a film about the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, through the remarkable stories of four young people growing up with visual impairment.
TRUE HEARTS, a film about romantic love.
“An Oscar-nominee in the documentary feature category this year, SUZANNE FARRELL: ELUSIVE MUSE is an extraordinarily insightful and touching souvenir of a career in thrall to a genius.”
- Allan Ulrich, S.F. EXAMINER DANCE CRITIC
Deborah Dickson understands story like not many filmmakers, She isn’t ruled by formulas or easy answers—“a story is like a puzzle and we have to find it” she told me once. Deborah was a story consultant on our first film STOLEN in 2008 and I basically learned to make films by editing with her.”
- Violeta Ayala
“Two of the funniest and most outrageous queer activists you'll ever see. Whether they are in City Hall, on the shores of West Palm Beach, or dancing on the Coney Island boardwalk, they move, enlighten, and inspire.”
- Dennis Harvey, VARIETY on RUTHIE AND CONNIE: EVERY ROOM IN THE HOUSE
“WITNESSES TO A SECRET WAR is a powerful documentary about a relatively unknown piece of American history--a story of betrayal, survival and hope.”
- Clint Eastwood, actor/director
“As a director/filmmaker, I would say that one of the most important influences has been my time as an editor because it is in the editing that stories are shaped. Wrestling with dramatic structure and story arcs has informed every decision I make as a director when I'm in the field.”
My life in film actually began with my love of books. I mean, what is a book other than a movie that unspools in your imagination?
In college I studied literature with the desire of becoming a poet. But after I got my first still camera suddenly images became as important to me as words. In the meantime, of course, I was going to the movies every weekend with my boyfriend and falling in love with the French New Wave--Truffault, Varda, Roehmer. In my senior year I took a film class at Columbia and I was hooked-- I went to NYU Film School to get a masters degree and in a way, that's where my life began-- total immersion for two years.
In so many ways, my life has been a series of fortuitous encounters--meeting the right people at the right time. I met two people who became mentors while I was at NYU--Leo Hurwitz (Native Land, etc) from whom I learned to edit, and Paul Caponigro, the great still photographer. And of course, several fellow students with whom I forged life-long friendships; I made three films with Anne Belle, the last of which, SUZANNE FARRELL, ELUSIVE MUSE, was nominated for an Academy Award.
The next fortuitous encounter came when David Maysles hired me as an assistant editor on something Muffie Meyer (a year ahead of me at NYU) was editing. I worked freelance at Maysles Films Inc for the next 20 years. It was there that I met Susan Froemke and made some of my favorite films—from CHRISTO IN PARIS to LALEE’S KIN, LEGACY OF COTTON.
And it was at Maysles that I fell in love with verite filmmaking and the strange beauty of capturing real people in actual situations unfolding, undirected, in front of the camera.
