David Weissman

David Weissman is a filmmaker, producer and director. His works include the Emmy-nominated We Were Here documentary and The Cockettes, and he is also the director of short films. Both films were nominated for Independent Spirit Awards in the Best Documentary category.

Early life Weissman was raised in Los Angeles he worked in restaurants, was politically active, He also worked as a legislative aide to San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt, who served after the assassination of Harvey Milk. In 1990, he was the first recipient of the Sundance Institute Mark Silverman Fellowship for New Producers, which included an internship on the Joel and Ethan Coen film Barton Fink.

In the 1990s, Weissman produced a series of public service announcements that focused on the emotional and psychological toll facing HIV-negative gay men during the AIDS epidemic in the United States.

In 1998, Weissman began producing and co-directing (with Bill Weber) the documentary The Cockettes, We Were Here was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary of 2011, and was on the short-list for the Best Documentary Academy Award.

In 2014, he began working on a documentary interview series, Conversations with Gay Elders, in which he works in partnership with gay men in their 20s and 30s as editors to profile gay men in their 70s and 80s. The first interview in the series was released in 2017.

In 2007, Weissman co-founded (with Russ Gage) QDoc, a queer documentary film festival in Portland, Oregon.