Nancy Buirski

Nancy Florence Buirski (née Cohen; June 24, 1945 – August 29, 2023; New York City) was an American documentary filmmaker, producer, photographer and a founder of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. She wrote, directed, and produced the documentary films A Crime on the Bayou (2020) and Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy (2022). In 1998 Buirski founded the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, in collaboration with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and directed it for ten years. However, she did not herself make documentaries until The Loving Story in 2011, which concerned the case of Mildred and Richard Loving, an interracial couple. Married in the District of Columbia in 1958 they had not realized that their marriage was illegal in Virginia, where they lived, and were only able to avoid imprisonment by agreeing to leave the state. After a lengthy legal battle, the Supreme Court found unanimously in their favor in 1967. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the film premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and was later presented at numerous other events. The film won an Emmy. Buirski was awarded a prize for The Loving Story at the Peabody Awards in 2012 and the movie was also on the shortlist for the Oscar in the category Best Documentary. The documentary was used by director Jeff Nichols as inspiration for the movie Loving (2016), for which Buirski was a producer. Buir…