Search

Helen Whitney

Helen Whitney

History

Oscar-nominated, Emmy and Peabody award-winning, film producer, director and writer Helen Whitney has been a prolific creator of documentaries and feature films. Her compelling subject matter has included topics such as youth gangs, presidential candidates, the McCarthy era, mental illness, Pope John Paul II, Great Britain’s class structure, homosexuality and photographer Richard Avedon. Among the actors she has worked with: Lindsay Kraus, Austin Pendleton, David Straithern, Brenda Fricker, Teresa Wright, Estelle Parsons. Throughout her career, she has maintained a deep interest in spiritual journeys, which she first explored with her documentary The Monastery, a 90-minute ABC special, about the oldest Trappist community in the Americas. Whitney followed this film with a three-hour Frontline documentary for PBS, John Paul II: The Millennial Pope, and in 2007 she produced The Mormons, a four-hour PBS series that explored the richness, complexities and controversies surrounding the Mormon faith. Following the Sept. 11 attacks, she produced Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, a two-hour documentary that examined how religious belief – and unbelief – of Americans was challenged and altered by the spiritual aftershocks of 9/11. The film has been repeated yearly since it first aired in 2002, and it was a PBS featured presentation on the 1st and on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. Her four-hour PBS series Forgiveness; A Time to Love and a Time to Hate examined the power, limitations, and in rare cases, the dangers of forgiveness through emblematic stories ranging from personal betrayal to genocide. This film involved shooting throughout America, and such countries as South Africa, Germany, Rwanda. Forgiveness aired on PBS in 2011 and it also inspired Whitney to write a book of the same title, with a forward written by the Dalai Lama. The filmmaker has received an Academy Award nomination, the Humanitas Prize, the Emmy, the DuPont-Columbia Journalism Award, The Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Journalism, The Director’s Guild Award, the Writers Guild Award and many other recognitions for her work.

Profile

Helen Whitney

Movies

Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death

Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death

Director

We don’t know how. We don’t know when. But death comes for us all. To be human is to wrestle with this truth and with the great unanswered question: How do we live with death in our eye? We can deny, we can rail, we can challenge, we can accept. What is our story, and will it sustain us at the end? “Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death,” a two-hour documentary, features men and women of uncommon eloquence and intelligence who are grappling with these questions. For them death is no longer an abstraction far off in the future, it is real. They come from all walks of life, all ages, dying and healthy, believers and unbelievers, well known and obscure. These are people who have been shocked into mortality and are forever changed. They have stories to tell, and we can listen and learn from them.

Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death

Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death

Writer

We don’t know how. We don’t know when. But death comes for us all. To be human is to wrestle with this truth and with the great unanswered question: How do we live with death in our eye? We can deny, we can rail, we can challenge, we can accept. What is our story, and will it sustain us at the end? “Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death,” a two-hour documentary, features men and women of uncommon eloquence and intelligence who are grappling with these questions. For them death is no longer an abstraction far off in the future, it is real. They come from all walks of life, all ages, dying and healthy, believers and unbelievers, well known and obscure. These are people who have been shocked into mortality and are forever changed. They have stories to tell, and we can listen and learn from them.

Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero

Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero

Writer

For many Americans, the most difficult questions about 9/11 were not about politics, military strategy or homeland security. They were questions about God, about evil and about the potential for darkness within religion itself. What was it we saw on Sept. 11? Was it the true face of evil? Was it the face of religion? And where, if one is a believer, was God on that tragic morning? A PBS Frontline special.

Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero

Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero

Director

For many Americans, the most difficult questions about 9/11 were not about politics, military strategy or homeland security. They were questions about God, about evil and about the potential for darkness within religion itself. What was it we saw on Sept. 11? Was it the true face of evil? Was it the face of religion? And where, if one is a believer, was God on that tragic morning? A PBS Frontline special.

Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light

Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light

Writer

Richard Avedon was one of the great geniuses of 20th century photography, famous for his fashion photography done for the likes of Vogue, Versace, and Armani, and equally famous for his black and white portraits of American people, both famous and unknown.

Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light

Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light

Director

Richard Avedon was one of the great geniuses of 20th century photography, famous for his fashion photography done for the likes of Vogue, Versace, and Armani, and equally famous for his black and white portraits of American people, both famous and unknown.

First Love, Fatal Love

First Love, Fatal Love

Director

A docudrama telling the true story of a young woman who learns she has contracted the AIDS virus after an encounter with a fellow student while in college.

American Inquisition

American Inquisition

Producer

An examination of the effect of McCarthyism on two ordinary Americans. Interviews with Paul McCarty and his family describe the loss of his job in a Paducah, Kentucky power plant in 1953 when his loyalty was questioned; he lost job after job for over twenty years. Interview with Luella Mundel, the object of false accusations based on her unconventional views and actions. Interviews with colleagues, friends, and a historian recreate the dramatic trial which devastated Mundel personally.

American Inquisition

American Inquisition

Writer

An examination of the effect of McCarthyism on two ordinary Americans. Interviews with Paul McCarty and his family describe the loss of his job in a Paducah, Kentucky power plant in 1953 when his loyalty was questioned; he lost job after job for over twenty years. Interview with Luella Mundel, the object of false accusations based on her unconventional views and actions. Interviews with colleagues, friends, and a historian recreate the dramatic trial which devastated Mundel personally.

American Inquisition

American Inquisition

Director

An examination of the effect of McCarthyism on two ordinary Americans. Interviews with Paul McCarty and his family describe the loss of his job in a Paducah, Kentucky power plant in 1953 when his loyalty was questioned; he lost job after job for over twenty years. Interview with Luella Mundel, the object of false accusations based on her unconventional views and actions. Interviews with colleagues, friends, and a historian recreate the dramatic trial which devastated Mundel personally.

Writer

First Edition is a 1977 American short documentary film about the Baltimore Sun directed by Helen Whitney. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Director

First Edition is a 1977 American short documentary film about the Baltimore Sun directed by Helen Whitney. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.