Academy-Award Nominated, Sundance Grand Jury Prize-Winning and Emmy- Award Winning Producer/Director Liz Garbus, co-founder of Moxie Firecracker Films in New York City, has produced award-winning documentaries for over ten different television broadcasters and for theatrical distribution alike.

During her varied career, Garbus has produced documentaries on a wide array of subjects including the US criminal justice system, the entertainment industry, marriage, prostitution, teenagers living on society's fringes and the Holocaust. In 1998, she achieved international public and critical acclaim with her Academy Award-nominated film, THE FARM: ANGOLA, USA. Made in collaboration with Jonathan Stack, THE FARM is the result of a three-year relationship that the filmmakers fostered with Louisiana Corrections Officials and with six men confined at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

Critics and audiences alike lauded THE FARM, awarding it-among many other prizes- an Academy Award Nomination, two Emmy Awards, the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, first prizes from the National Society of Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the New York Film Critics Circle, and numerous other film festival jury prizes. THE FARM opened theatrically in June 1998 at New York's Film Forum and aired on the Arts & Entertainment Network and Channel 4 in the United Kingdom in September 1998. This film was hailed as "maybe the strongest documentary of the decade" in the New York Press.

Moxie Firecracker, Inc. - Recent Work

In January 1998, Garbus co-founded Moxie Firecracker, Inc., an independent documentary production company, with director Rory Kennedy. Within the past five years, Moxie Firecracker has produced numerous feature-length documentary films, with several more in production. Garbus has recently completed directing a new feature-length documentary, GIRLHOOD, which tells the story of two girls, both convicted of violent crimes at a young age, and their path to redemption. It is a story of crime and its consequences, transgression and healing, and the corrosive power and saving grace of family. This film, called "one of the most important films of the year" by LA Weekly, has won Audience Awards at both the South by Southwest Film Festival and the Nantucket Film Festival, won the Jury Award at the Atlanta Film Festival and will open theatrically in October of 2003. GIRLHOOD will air on TLC in 2004 and was distributed theatrically by Wellspring, opening in 10-15 cities nationwide.

Garbus has also recently completed directing THE NAZI OFFICER'S WIFE, a feature-length documentary that opened theatrically in six cities and aired on A&E on June 29th of 2003. Narrated by Susan Sarandon and Julia Ormond, the film tells the extraordinary story of Edith Hahn, a Jew from Vienna, who managed to survive the war by obtaining false papers and, ultimately, marrying a Nazi. Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times called it "bewitching, harrowing... engrossing."

Other recently completed films include THE EXECUTION OF WANDA JEAN, which tells the story of Wanda Jean Allen, a twelve-year inhabitant of Oklahoma's three-woman death row, the first black woman to be executed in America in the last fifty years. The film premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and aired in the spring of 2002 as part of HBO's America Undercover series. It opened theatrically at the Quad Cinema in New York, won the Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award and was nominated for Best Documentary by NAMIC (National Association of Minorities in Communications). New York Magazine called it a "broad, gripping, and tragic piece of Americana."

Other recent Moxie Firecracker projects include: a four-part series of one-hour documentary films for The Oxygen Network, called SIXTEEN, which feature a cross-section of teenage girls at their most crucial and volatile year of adolescence; two projects for HBO, including A BOY'S LIFE, which focuses on a young boy and his family in Eupora, Mississippi, and PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS, a feature-length look at the grave health crisis in Uganda, India, Brazil, Russia and Thailand; and a special for Lifetime called TOGETHER: STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, a film profiling four women who put an end to the violence in their lives, hosted by Angie Harmon & Jason Seahorn, which aired in February 2003.

Earlier Work

Garbus made her directorial debut with the Emmy Nominated FINAL JUDGEMENT: THE EXECUTION OF ANTONIO JAMES, which premiered on the Discovery Channel in August 1996. Working closely with Wilbert Rideau, the award-winning journalist and former death row inmate who is currently serving a life sentence, Garbus told the story of the last days of Antonio James, Louisiana's longest death row inmate, with unprecedented intimacy and candor. In 1997, Garbus directed THE SECRET LIFE OF A SERIAL KILLER for A&E Network. The film chronicles the little-known case of Herbert Baumeister, one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.

In 1999, Garbus produced and directed JUVIES, which aired on A&E in March 2000. Inspired by Garbus' experiences on THE FARM, JUVIES chronicles the turbulent journeys of three troubled young men as they travel through Maryland's Juvenile Justice system. In 1999, Garbus produced and co-directed THE TRAVELERS, with Alison Ellwood. The film penetrates a community of young transients, self-described "modern-day hobos," who hop freight trains from coast to coast. When it aired on MTV in April 2000, it was the No.1 show on MTV for the week.

From 1993 though 2002, Garbus and Kennedy produced and directed HEALTHY START, ALL KINDS OF FAMILIES, THE CHANGING FACE OF BEAUTY, and DIFFERENT MOMS - all for Lifetime television. DIFFERENT MOMS, a film about mentally retarded mothers raising normally developed children, opened the Doubletake Documentary Festival in April 1999 and aired on Lifetime Television the following Mother's Day.

In addition to their feature length work, Garbus and Kennedy have produced and directed two short films. The first, EPIDEMIC: AFRICA, examines the devastating impact of AIDS on families in sub-Saharan Africa. The film was screened for the U.S. Senate in September 1999. The second, UP IN ARMS, is an advocacy film about people who have lost family members to gun violence. The film played in over 300 cities on October 2, 2000 as part of the Alliance for Justice's First Monday 2000: Unite to End Gun Violence campaign.

Garbus' other documentary works include IT'S RIGHT NOW, four impressionistic short films about the Sundance Film Festival, commissioned by the Sundance Channel and aired in January 1999. Additionally, she produced IN SEARCH OF THE HAPPY ENDING, a documentary for Disney and Showtime, directed by internationally acclaimed feature film director, Garry Marshall (PRETTY WOMAN, RUNAWAY BRIDE).

Garbus has been a guest on The Rosie O'Donnell Show, The Charlie Rose Show, CNN, Good Morning America, Extra!, The Johnnie Cochran Show, National Public Radio, the Sundance Channel, and the Independent Film Channel. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the LA Times, as well as Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and other weekly publications. Garbus has also spoken at a number of film-related events, including the 1999 and 2000 Independent Feature Film Market, panels and workshops at the Sundance Film Festival, as a Guest Lecturer at NYU, and she has served on juries at several major film festivals.

Garbus graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brown University in 1992 and is a Fellow of the Soros Foundation's Center on Crime, Communities, and Culture. Prior to co-founding Moxie Firecracker, Inc. with Kennedy, Garbus founded Firecracker Films, her own documentary production company.