Life and Career
After attending Pomfret School, Gibney earned his bachelor's degree from Yale University and later attended the UCLA Film School. He is the son of journalist Frank Gibney and the stepson of the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin.
He served as executive producer of the documentary No End in Sight (2007). His film Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2008) is documentary based on Hunter S. Thompson and his "Gonzo" style of journalism. Under executive producer Martin Scorsese, Gibney was series producer for the PBS television series The Blues (2003) producing individual episodes directed by Wim Wenders and Charles Burnett, and writer and producer of the series The Pacific Century (1992) which won the News & Documentary Emmy for Outstanding Historical Program. Several films he directed and/or produced have been screened at the Cannes, Sundance, Toronto and Tribeca Film Festivals.
Gibney's film style traces much of its origins back to the film The Exterminating Angel, said the director to Robert K. Elder in an interview for The Film That Changed My Life:
dark, but it's also wickedly funny and mysterious in ways that can’t be reduced to a simple, analytical explanation. I always thought that's what's great about movies sometimes—the best movies have to be experienced; they can’t just be written about.
Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival where it won Best Documentary. The film probes the homicide of an innocent taxi driver named Dilawar (torture victim) at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.
Gibney is currently directing The Road Back, a film on Lance Armstrong. He is also contributing a film to ESPN's 30 for 30 documentary series: called Catching Hell, it will look at "The Inning" in Game 6 the 2003 National League Championship Series.
Gibney is President of Jigsaw Productions, a production company which produces independent films, music documentaries, and TV mini-series. This year he won the Yale Film Studies' Program Award for his contributions to film culture. In 2010, Utne Reader magazine listed Gibney as one of the "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World."
He also writes for the Huffington Post blog.
Read more about this topic: Alex Gibney
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