Tom Neff
Tom Neff ( born 1953 in Chicago, Illinois, actually Thomas Linden Neff ) is an American film director and producer.
Life
Neff studied at the Lawrence University English and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. In 1981 he received his Master of Fine Arts at USC School of Cinematic Arts. In 1983 he made his first feature film Running Mates and founded the production company for Horizon film. The film was later distributed by New World Pictures. This was followed by short documentaries, including Red Grooms: Sunflower in a Hothouse for which he was nominated along with Medline Bell for an Oscar for best short documentary and for which he received his first Golden Eagle, a prize from the Council on International Nontheatrical events. For Frederic Remington: The Truth of Other Days (1990) and Beatrice Wood: Mama of Dada (1992 ) he received each another. In 1993, he was the first American to win the Golden Panda Sichuan Television Festival.
In the 1990s he founded with Diandra Douglas Wild Wolf productions, a production company in Culver City, which created documentaries. The local works include the aforementioned Beatrice Wood: Mama of Dada and America 's Music: The Roots of Country (1996). He founded in 1998 the TV channel DOC: The Documentary Channel. The channel, which only sent the first American TV station documentation runs in Dish Network and DirecTV on.
Neff produced and wrote a 30- minute documentary about the musician Herb Alpert, the IMAX film Country Music: The Spirit of America ( 2003) and the feature film Chances: The Women of Magdalene (2006).
Neff was and is active in various television organizations. So he was on the board of the International Documentary Association, the Tennessee Governor's movie to Advisory Board and the Board of Directors of the Watkins College of Art & Design in Nashville. He was also Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Belcourt Theatre and Deputy Chairman of the Nashville Film Festival. He is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Teaching
Neff taught in the 1990s at the School of Cinematic Arts music video production. His students created with financial support from Arista Nashville record companies and other videos for country musicians such as Radney Forster.
Neff teaches at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.