26-550: Eugene Jarecki (born October 5, 1969) is an American documentary filmmaker. He is best known as a two-time winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, as well as multiple Emmy and Peabody Awards, for his films Why We Fight , Reagan , and The House I Live In . His other films include The Trials of Henry Kissinger , Freakonomics , The Opponent , and Quest of the Carib Canoe . His most recent feature, The King ,
52-533: A Grammy Award for Best Music Film, The King is a musical road trip in Elvis Presley 's 1963 Rolls-Royce that features Alec Baldwin , Chuck D , Emmylou Harris , Mike Myers , Rosanne Cash , Van Jones , and Ethan Hawke , among others, tracing the rise and fall of Elvis as a metaphor for the country he left behind. Alongside the film, Jarecki created a series of music videos for artists such as Lana Del Rey , M. Ward , The Handsome Family , Immortal Technique , and
78-429: A second Grand Jury Prize at Sundance as well as a second Peabody Award. Achieving a level of mainstream recognition, the film's producers included Danny Glover , John Legend , Brad Pitt , and Russell Simmons . In order to create a genuine impact, the film was exhibited in over 130 U.S. prisons, churches, and statehouses, as well as on Capitol Hill. Along with the music video of the same name , featuring John Legend, and
104-533: A yet-untitled action film about a Saharan, Tuareg nomad, who seeks revenge for a crime committed against his tribal customs. Jarecki wrote the screenplay with his son Jonas Jarecki, based on a best-selling novel. Addison O'Dea is producing. As a public intellectual on U.S. domestic and international policy, Jarecki has appeared on a variety of national television programs including The Daily Show , The Colbert Report , Real Time with Bill Maher , Fox & Friends , and Charlie Rose . In 2010, he created
130-632: Is a 2005 documentary film by Eugene Jarecki about the military–industrial complex . The title refers to the World War II -era eponymous propaganda films commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers . Why We Fight was first screened at the Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower 's farewell address . Although it won
156-471: Is now modern Guyana to the islands of the Caribbean. His second film that year was a dramatic feature called The Opponent released by Lionsgate . In 2002, his first theatrical documentary feature The Trials of Henry Kissinger was released. Based on the book The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens , this film is the first of Jarecki's sweeping indictments of the perils of power. Trials
182-475: The 2011 Sundance Film Festival . The film includes interviews with and commentary by several people who worked in Reagan's White House. It was reviewed favorably by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert , who wrote, "Mr. Jarecki’s documentary does a first-rate job of respectfully separating the real from the mythical, the significant from the nonsense." This article about a biographical documentary film
208-528: The Stax Music Academy All-Stars. In 2018, Jarecki's first public contemporary art exhibit, entitled Promised Land, was featured at Miami Art Basel as part of "This is Not America" at the Faena Hotel, Miami Beach. A multiscreen video presentation, Promised Land was inspired by Jarecki's 2018 film, The King . In 2019, it was announced that Jarecki is returning to dramatic filmmaking with
234-622: The 2005 book Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner . The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival that year. In 2011, Jarecki returned to the Sundance Film Festival with his Emmy Award-winning film Reagan , before its national television release on HBO on what would have been the 40th President's 100th birthday. The next year, The House I Live In , his film about America's War on Drugs , won Jarecki
260-585: The Friedmans ) and Thomas A. Jarecki. They also have a half-brother Nicholas Jarecki ( Arbitrage ). All four brothers are in the film industry, most notably Andrew who has also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Emmy award for his own films and series. After graduating from the Hackley School in 1987, Eugene attended Princeton University. There he trained as a stage director, but pivoted into film, where he experienced early success. His first short film, Season of
286-560: The Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, the film received a limited public cinema release on January 22, 2006. It also won one of the 2006 Grimme Awards in the competition "Information & Culture"; the prize is one of Germany's most prestigious for television productions and a Peabody Award in 2006. Why We Fight describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military–industrial complex and its 50-year involvement with
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#1732851797251312-657: The Lifterbees , premiered at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival and won the Time Warner Grand Prize at the Aspen Film Festival. In 2000, Jarecki directed two feature films. One was the documentary Quest of the Carib Canoe , which documents an effort by indigenous Carib Indians on the Island of Dominica to build an ancient ocean-going canoe and retrace their ancestors' path from South America's Orinoco Delta in what
338-534: The U.S. as a refugee child from Vietnam in 1975. The producer's list included "more than a dozen organizations, from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to the United Kingdom's BBC, Estonia's ETV and numerous European broadcasters" but no U.S. names. The Sundance Institute did, however, provide completion funding. Writer and director Jarecki said "serious examination of Eisenhower and
364-434: The aftermath of his speech proved 'too radical' for potential American funders for his film" and except for Sundance, he "could not raise a dollar in the U.S." Reagan (2011 film) Reagan is a 2011 American documentary film, written and directed by Eugene Jarecki , covering the life and presidency of Ronald Reagan . The documentary was aired as part of the centennial anniversary of Reagan's birth, and screened at
390-610: The consequences of said foreign policy with the stories of a Vietnam War veteran whose son was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks , and who then asked the military to write the name of his dead son on any bomb to be dropped in Iraq; a 23-year-old New Yorker who enlists in the United States Army because he was poor and in debt, his decision impelled by his mother's death; and a military explosives scientist ( Anh Duong ) who arrived in
416-541: The death of secrecy in the digital age, to the role of the individual in a society where privacy is as besieged as sexual orientation." In April 2020, Jarecki created the Trump Death Clock, a 56-foot billboard in Times Square , New York City , that attributed U.S. COVID-19 deaths to Donald Trump and his administration's alleged delayed response to the pandemic . Why We Fight (2005 film) ' Why We Fight'
442-489: The documentary feature film (T)ERROR , directed by Lyric Cabral and David Felix Sutcliff, which won Jarecki a Sundance Special Jury Prize and his second Emmy Award. That same year, he also executive produced Laura Israel's feature documentary Don't Blink – Robert Frank about the late legendary photographer's work and career. His most recent film, The King , produced by Steven Soderbergh , Errol Morris , and Rosanne Cash , premiered at Cannes and Sundance. Nominated for
468-404: The forces that shape American foreign policy. He has been a visiting fellow at Brown University 's Watson Institute for International Studies and is the author of The American Way of War (2008), published by Simon & Schuster/Free Press. Jarecki has also participated as a speaker at several international conferences including Ted, Nantucket Project, and will.i.am 's "TRANS4M" gathering for
494-600: The i.am.angel Foundation. At the 2014 Nantucket Project, Jarecki conducted a public interview with WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange as a hologram , beamed in to Nantucket from his place of asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Jarecki wrote in The Guardian before the event, "it crosses my mind I may be abetting a crime or violating international extradition laws. But I reassure myself that, in this regard,
520-540: The role of America's military-industrial complex in leading the nation into the tragic quagmire of the Iraq War , won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and a Peabody Award. He also received a nomination for Best Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America for the film. Alongside directors Alex Gibney , Morgan Spurlock , and Rachel Grady , Jarecki directed a segment of the 2010 feature Freakonomics based on
546-497: The short film Move Your Money , encouraging Americans to move their banking from "too big to fail" banks into smaller community banks and credit unions. It became a viral sensation leading to an estimated 4 million Americans moving their money out of major banks. Jarecki is also the Founder and Executive director of The Eisenhower Project , an academic public policy group, dedicated, in the spirit of Dwight D. Eisenhower , to studying
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#1732851797251572-554: The viral short Just Say No...to the War on Drugs , (both directed by Jarecki), the film is credited with changing the national conversation on U.S. drug policy. In 2014, Jarecki took part in the first Ted Talk in the history of Cuba at Havana's Teatro Nacional. Events that occurred in the days leading up to the talk became the subject of Jarecki's 2016 short film, The Cyclist (El Ciclista) which he directed for The New Yorker / Amazon . In 2015, Jarecki served as executive producer on
598-696: The wars led by the United States to date, especially its 2003 invasion of Iraq . The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American public was misled so that the government (incumbent Administration ) could take them to war and fuel the military-industrial economy maintaining American political dominance in the world. Interviewed about this matter are politician John McCain , political scientist and former CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson , politician Richard Perle , neoconservative commentator William Kristol , writer Gore Vidal , and public policy expert Joseph Cirincione . Why We Fight documents
624-431: The worldwide web remains a kind of wild wild west, and the virtual escape of a person is not (yet?) a crime." As a sequel to this interview, Jarecki publicly interviewed former U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning at the 2017 Nantucket Project, after her 35-year prison sentence was commuted by President Obama . In The Guardian , Jarecki wrote, "Manning sees connections in the duty of the soldier who uncovers high crimes, to
650-678: Was nominated for two Emmys in 2020, including Best Documentary Feature, and a 2019 Grammy Award for Best Music Film of the Year. Jarecki is also the author of The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men , and a Republic in Peril (Simon & Schuster). Jarecki was born in New Haven, Connecticut to Henry Jarecki and Gloria Jarecki, a former film critic at Time magazine. Jarecki grew up in New York with his brothers Andrew Jarecki ( The Jinx , Capturing
676-546: Was selected to launch both the Sundance Channel 's DOCday venture as well as the BBC 's digital channel, BBC Four . Ultimately, the film has been broadcast in over thirty countries. Winner of the 2002 Amnesty International Award, the film was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and In 2002, In 2005, Jarecki distinguished himself as a filmmaker unafraid of serious, penetrating investigations. His film Why We Fight about
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