Alan Berliner (born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, October 11, 1956) is an American filmmaker. Many of his films have been aired on PBS Public Broadcasting Service program P.O.V.. Most of his films are generally classified as documentaries. Alan Berliner’s uncanny ability to combine experimental cinema, artistic purpose and popular appeal into compelling film essays has made him one of America’s most acclaimed independent filmmakers. The New York Times has described Berliner's work as "powerful, compelling and bittersweet... full of juicy conflict and contradiction, innovative in their cinematic technique, unpredictable in their structures... Alan Berliner illustrates the power of fine art to transform life."
Films
Berliner's experimental documentary films, Wide Awake (2006), The Sweetest Sound (2001), Nobody's Business (1996), Intimate Stranger (1991), and The Family Album (1986), have been broadcast all over the world, and received awards and prizes at many major international film festivals. Selected retrospectives of his films have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the International Center of Photography (NYC) and at film festivals from Norway and Finland to England, Australia and Brazil. Several of his films are routinely rented for filmmaking and film history classes at universities all across the United States, and are in the permanent collections of many film societies, festivals, libraries, colleges and museums.
Awards and honors
A recipient of Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Jerome Foundation Fellowships, Berliner has received multiple grants from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA and in 1998, won his third career Emmy Award (he has also received six nominations) from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He was also the recipient of a Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association in 1993, and was honored with a "Storyteller Award" from the 2001 Taos Talking Picture Film Festival. In June 2002, he was awarded a "Jewish Cultural Achievement Award in the Arts" by the National Foundation For Jewish Culture.
