BARBARA KOPPLE - Director

Two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple is one of the world's most esteemed filmmakers. Her much-honored feature documentaries have explored the social, cultural and political fabric of American life. Producing and directing all of her films, Ms. Kopple's work has brought her numerous awards and fellowships from such organizations as the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Ms. Kopple produced and directed the classic documentary Harlan County USA, about striking coal miners. The winner of the 1977 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, Harlan County USA was named to the National Film Registry by Congress in 1991 and designated an American Film Classic. Also in 1991, Ms. Kopple received her second Academy Award for her documentary American Dream, which explored the human cost of the rapid economic decline of America's industrial heartland. The film also won the 1992 Directors Guild of America Award for Best Feature Documentary, and swept the 1991 Sundance Film Festival Awards, winning the Grand Jury Prize, the Audience Award and the Filmmaker's Trophy.

For her film Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson, Ms. Kopple received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Directing. The first documentary to be featured as a Movie of the Week on NBC, Fallen Champ also received the Best Special Award from the Television Critics Association, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement.

Ms. Kopple's dramatic films include the TBS production "A Century of Women" and the PBS American Playhouse film "Keeping On." She has co-directed several feature documentary films, including Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy; No Nukes; and Hurricane Irene. She has also produced and directed for Sports Illustrated Television, TBS and HBO Real Sports, winning a Cable ACE Award for "Nails," a portrait of the hard-hitting baseball player Lenny Dykstra.

Among the other honors that Ms. Kopple has won over the years are the Christopher Award; Mademoiselle Award; Los Angeles Film Critics Award; the Golden Gate Award; the Cannes Film Festival: Critics Choice Award; Women in Film: Dorothy Arzner Directing Award; American Film Institute Maya Deren Award; and the International Documentary Association Award.

Ms. Kopple recently completed directing her second episode of the acclaimed Barry Levinson television series "Homicide: Life on the Street." She also produced and directed two short films for the Presidents' Summit for America's Future, a national conference on volunteer and community service chaired by President Clinton and General Colin Powell, and And Justice For All, a 30 minute documentary about the impact of the recent harsh changes in immigration law on two immigrants' lives. In 1996, Ms. Kopple produced, along with Brandon Tartikoff and Joe Lovett, "New Passages," a two hour ABC television documentary based on Gail SheehyÕs best selling book.

Her upcoming films include Generations, about the Woodstock Legacy and Generation X (to be completed in early 1998); "Defending our Daughters: Women of the World," a Lifetime Television documentary film examining women's struggles for social, political and economic rights in such diverse cultures as Bosnia, Pakistan and Egypt. Also coming is the feature film, Joe Glory, a love story set against a political backdrop, and a film adaptation of David Rabe's play, In The Boom Boom Room, both of which Ms. Kopple will direct.