Daphne Pinkerson

Producer / Director / Shooter

Daphne Pinkerson has worked on a range of award-winning social and political documentaries for HBO, PBS, Bill Moyers, and NBC, among others. She has been Marc Levin's documentary film partner for the past ten years. Along with Marc, she won the National Emmy for best documentary for THUG LIFE IN D.C., which premiered on HBO. HEIR TO AN EXECUTION, a film she produced about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, was an official selection of The Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO. She produced GODFATHERS AND SONS, a film on Chicago Blues, for Martin Scorsese's PBS series on Blues music.

In 2001, NARAL presented their Courageous Advocate Award to her for SOLDIERS IN THE ARMY OF GOD, a film she produced and directed for HBO. In the year 2000, she produced two films, SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER, a PBS special on human rights activists and TWILIGHT LOS ANGELES, Anna Deavere Smith's performance film on the riots in South Central.

For THE EXECUTION MACHINE, which also aired on HBO, she was able to secure unprecedented access to Death Row in Texas. She was the supervising producer for the critically acclaimed Discovery Channel series, CIA: AMERICA'S SECRET WARRIORS. Her other HBO films include MOB STORIES, GANG WAR: BANGIN' IN LITTLE ROCK, and its ten year follow-up Back in the Hood, PRISONERS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS, GLADIATOR DAYS, and PROTOCOLS OF ZION.

For Bill Moyers she produced THE HOME FRONT, THE POLITICS OF ADDICTION, OKLAHOMA CITY: ONE YEAR LATER, and three parts of his series on youth violence.

In addition to producing, she also shoots stylized film and video with small format cameras. She has captured some cinematic firsts, filming a gang drive-by shooting in Little Rock, Arkansas (HBO's GANG WAR: BANGIN' IN LITTLE ROCK) and inmates injecting drugs in prison (HBO's PRISONERS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS). She was the Associate Producer on the dramatic feature SLAM and shot all of its montage footage. In 1988, during the press restrictions in South Africa, she launched SOUTH AFRICA NOW, a weekly half-hour news program which commissioned pieces from inside South Africa for broadcast on Public Television, CNN World Report and ITN. Most recently she was the supervising producer on MR. UNTOUCHABLE, a film about heroin kingpin Nicky Barnes, which was theatrically released this fall.