Bio

Tom Hurwitz, ASC is one of America’s most honored documentary cinematographers. Winner of two Emmy Awards, the Sundance and Jerusalem Film Festival Awards for Best Cinematography, Hurwitz has photographed films that have won 4 academy awards and several more nominations (most recently for Dancemaker and Killing in the Name). His television programs have won literally dozens of awards, Emmy, Dupont, Peabody, Directors Guild and film festival awards for Best Documentary, over the last 25 years — most recently were Emmy Awards for Best Documentary Specials for the PBS show Jerome Robbins and the PBS series Franklin, on which Hurwitz directed the photography.

Other award-winning films and programs that he has photographed include: Valentino: The Last Emperor, Harlan County USA, Wild Man Blues, My Generation, Down and Out in America, The Turandot Project, Liberty, Dolley, Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, for PBS; and I Have a Dream, for ABC; and Killing in the Name, and Questioning Faith for HBO. In addition, films that he has directed have won the Cine Golden Eagle (for Bombs will Make the Rainbow Break) and have been shown in festivals around the world.  He is also a founding member of the faculty of The MFA Program in the Social Documentary, at New York’s School of Visual Arts, and is a member of the Kamera Kollektiv NYC.

Tom was born in 1947 and reared in New York City, attending private schools and then doing his undergraduate work at Columbia University with majors in English and Religion. With the exception of five years in California in the 1970’s, his base has been his beloved New York. He is married to Margaret Klenck, a Jungian psychoanalyst and president of the Jungian Psychoanalytical Association, with whom he has one son, Nicholas. He has two daughters, Mekea and Anya, from a previous marriage.

Apart from his film career and his time with family, Tom functions as a seminary-trained liturgist, and a verger at New York’s Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, helping to oversee weekly services and the great holiday liturgies of the world’s largest gothic church.