SAM POLLARD
Executive Producer
Sam Pollard’s professional accomplishments as a feature film and television video editor and documentary producer/director span almost thirty years. He served as Executive Producer on the documentary Brother Outsider, Official Selection 2003 Sundance Film Festival. His first assignment as a documentary producer came in 1989 for Henry Hampton’s Blackside production Eyes On The Prize II: America at the Racial Crosswords. For one of his episodes in this series, he received an Emmy. Eight years later, he returned to Blackside as Co-Executive Producer/Producer of Hampton’s last documentary series, I’ll Make Me A World: Stories of African-American Artists and Community. For the series, Mr. Pollard received The George Peabody Award. Between 1990 and 2000, Mr. Pollard edited some of Spike Lee’s films: Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Girl 6, Clockers, and Bamboozled. As well, Mr. Pollard and Mr. Lee co-produced a couple of documentary productions for the small and big screen: Spike Lee Presents Mike Tyson, a biographical sketch for HBO for which Mr. Pollard received an Emmy, and Four Little Girls, a feature-length documentary about the 1965 Birmingham church bombings which was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1998, Pollard received an Academy Award nomination for 4 Little Girls with Spike Lee. In 2010, Pollard (with Geeta Gandbhir and Arielle Amsalem) received an Emmy Award (Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming) for the film By the People: The Election of Barack Obama. In 2020, the International Documentary Association gave Pollard its first Career Achievement Award. MLK/FBI was named best documentary at the 2020 San Diego International Film Festival. In 2021, Film at Lincoln Center put together a Tribute to Sam Pollard, featuring several of his documentaries, calling him one of “cinema’s most dedicated chroniclers of the Black experience in America. He is the winner of nine (9) Prime-Time Emmys, eight (8) Peabody Awards, and three (3) Academy Award Nominations. LOWNDES COUNTY and The Road to Black Freedom are the 2023 Prime-Time Emmy Winners of The Best Documentary.