Artist

Vivian Kleiman

Vivian Kleiman is a veteran Executive Producer, Producer, Director and Consultant. Her work has been honored with the George Foster Peabody Award, Organization of American Historians’ Eric Barnouw Award, International Documentary Association’s Outstanding Achievement Award, and an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Research. Her work also has been screened at major international film festivals including Sundance, Toronto, and Berlin.

A longtime collaborator with landmark filmmaker Marlon Riggs, together they co-founded a production company, Signifyin’ Works, to produce works dedicated to African-American culture, including Tongues Untied and Color Adjustment. She also supervised the posthumous completion of his final work, Black Is…Black Ain’t. Recently, she produced the re-mastered DVD version of Tongues Untied, including outtakes, behind-the-scene moments, and additional interviews with crew and colleagues.

In partnership with the Independent Television Service (ITVS), Kleiman has collaborated on several documentaries produced for broadcast on national PBS
: Roam Sweet Home, Forgotten Fires, First Person Plural, Hope Along the Wind, Maquilapolis and the recently completed The Key of G.

Kleiman served as Senior Producer/Series Director
of The Meaning of Food, a three-part series in magazine format broadcast on national PBS. As Director, her credits also include many short format documentaries, such as Of Rights and Wrongs; My Body’s My Business; Judy Chicago: The Birth Project; Out for the Count; and Ein Stehaufmannchen. As Writer, her selected credits include: California and the American Dream (a four-part documentary series for national PBS); Public Knowledge’s So What…About Copyright?; and Film Arts Foundation’s Release Print.

From 1995-2002 Kleiman was a member of the adjunct faculty at Stanford University’s Graduate Program in Documentary Film & Video Production.

Artist Code: 375

Videography

My Body's My Business

1992, 16:00 minutes, colour, English

Critical Writing

Curatorial Incubator v. 13: The Job of Life
by Lisa Steele. Toronto: Vtape, 2016.