Laurie Kahn

Areas of Expertise

Documentary Film; Women’s History; American History; Web Design

Email: lkl@brandeis.edu

Current Project

I am developing several projects that will begin as innovative websites (taking advantage of the participatory, cyberlearning potential of the internet) -- and then evolve into feature-length documentary films for national broadcast. I am also collaborating on a Broadway musical based on my last documentary film.

Biography

Laurie Kahn is interested in telling compelling, visually interesting stories that don’t normally find their way to the screen. Laurie’s film A Midwife’s Tale was part of PBS’s The American Experience series and won numerous awards including a national Emmy for Outstanding Non-fiction. Her more recent film, TUPPERWARE! won the George Foster Peabody Award and was nominated for a national Best Nonfiction Director Emmy. Both films are used in courses on women’s history, medical history, early American history, obstetrics,  midwifery, 20th century history, marketing and gender studies.

Laurie also conceived of and produced an award winning website, DoHistory.org, that immerses its users in the hands-on process of piecing together the life of an “ordinary” person in the past.  Kahn’s independent film company, Blueberry Hill Productions, was founded in 1992.  During the 1980s and early 1990s, she worked on many award-winning documentary series, including The American Experience, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-1965, and Frontline Special Report: Crisis in Central America. For the past four years Laurie has directed the Creativity Foundation.  She has also been a consultant for the American Film Institute, The Smithsonian Institution, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Before working in film, she worked in radio for NPR’s evening news program All Things Considered.

Education

B.A., Princeton University

Representative Publications

Tupperware!  By Laurie Kahn-Leavitt.  Narr. Kathy Bates.  PBS American Experience, 2004.

A Midwife’s Tale. By Laurie Kahn-Leavitt.  Dir. Richard P. Rogers.  PBS American Experience, 1997.

Links

Curriculum Vitae

Tupperware!

PBS American Experience: Tupperware!

PBS American Experience: A Midwife's Tale

DoHistory 

Creativity Foundation