Telling Pictures

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s partnership making non-fiction and feature films began in 1987 when they opened an office in a former convent and Catholic girl’s school in San Francisco and founded Telling Pictures. Their creative styles clicked and their films have since played in movie theaters, at festivals, and on television throughout the world. Between them they have received two Academy Awards, five Emmy Awards, three Peabodys, as well as Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships.

After taking a bus from New York City to San Francisco at age 19, Rob Epstein began his filmmaking career by answering a classified ad seeking a production assistant on a documentary then in its early stages of development. The film went on to become the landmark documentary Word Is Out, released in theaters in 1977, and Rob went on to become one of its co-directors along with the other members of the Mariposa Film Group.

Rob’s next project was Oscar-winning feature documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, which he conceived, directed, and co-edited. In addition to winning the Academy Award for Feature documentary, Harvey Milk received the New York Film Critics Award for Best Non-Fiction film of 1985.

Rob won his second Oscar for the documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, made with Jeffrey Friedman. His other films with Jeffrey Friedman include Where Are We?, The Celluloid Closet, Paragraph 175, and the forth-coming feature film Howl, starring James Franco.

Rob’s work has been shown in theaters, on television, at festivals, and museums throughout the world, including retrospectives at the Institute for Contemporary Art in London and the Taiwan International Film Festival. His Oscars for Harvey Milk and Common Threads, along with multiple Peabody Awards, Emmys, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, have established Rob as one of the most-acclaimed directors working today. In 2008, Rob was awarded the Pioneer Award from the International Documentary Association for distinguished lifetime achievement.

In addition to his filmmaking career, Rob is a professor at California College of the Arts, where he also serves as co-chair of the Media Arts program. He has also been a visiting professor at the Graduate Film Program at Tisch School of the Arts/NYU.

Rob is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences where he currently serves on the Board of Governors and is chair of the documentary branch

Jeffrey began his career in New York City as a child actor off-Broadway. He began his film training in the editing rooms of such notable films as The Exorcist (1973), Raging Bull (1980) and the Oscar-winning documentary Marjoe (1972), apprenticing to some of the most highly respected filmmakers in the industry. He began editing documentaries for television, and was Associate Editor on the 1983 feature film Never Cry Wolf.  He first worked with Rob Epstein as a consultant on The Times of Harvey Milk, and again as editor on a PBS series, after which they decided to work together as a filmmaking team and formed Telling Pictures.  Together they have made the documentary features Common Threads (Academy Award, Best Documentary Feature), The Celluloid Closet (Emmy Award for directing)—both of which Jeffrey also co-edited—and Paragraph 175 (Sundance Jury prize for directing). Jeffrey has taught editing at California College of the Arts and documentary filmmaking in the graduate program at Stanford University. He is currently working with Rob on the nonfiction feature Howl. Jeffrey is a member of the Directors Guild of America, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.