Alex would have loved to have been a pro tennis player or musician but it just wasn’t in his cards. Instead he went on to become one of the world's most important documentary filmmakers. Raised by a journalist and a theologian who were constantly challenging the status quo, Alex would grow into a “filmmaker with journalistic baggage". Alex studied Japanese at Yale but when he discovered the Maysles, who were mixing artistic filmmaking with investigative techniques, he went on to UCLA Film School and made his first documentary The Ruling Classroom, about a classroom democracy experiment gone wrong. It would hint at things to come. Spurred on by the anti-authoritarian journalistic integrity he inherited, plus an undying curiosity about the world around him and a strong distaste for any sort of bully, Alex hunts for truth in whatever subject he explores. A personal credo to always embrace the contradictions of life, gives his films a satisfying complexity that resonates long after they’re over.
As a writer, director, and producer he’s won an Oscar, Peabodys, Emmys, and a Grammy and while many of his films showcase the abuse of power he’s also found room to embrace his deep love of sports and music with his ESPN 30 for 30 series, and his films about Janis Joplin, James Brown, Fela Kuti, and The Blues, the series he produced with Martin Scorsese. In 2018 he crossed over into scripted storytelling as a writer, director and executive producer of the Hulu series The Looming Tower, which landed Alex a WGA nomination and 5 Emmy nominations. His feature-length doc, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, aired on HBO post the Sundance 2019 premiere. Most recently, Alex shot and premiered Totally Under Control, one of the only documentaries about Covid-19 that was produced while the pandemic unfolded. The film was released by Neon just before the 2020 presidential election and Alex was nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay at the 2021 WGA Awards.
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