Judy Hoffman

Judy Hoffman is an American filmmaker and arts activist based in Chicago. She graduated from Northwestern University with a MFA and currently holds a faculty position at the University of Chicago. Hoffman has played a major role in the development of Kartemquin Films, a documentary filmmaking company founded in Chicago in 1966. Hoffman has worked with extensively with Kwakwaka’wakw, a First Nation in British Columbia, to produce films. Hoffman has brought activism to her films, and continues to show different facets of the city of Chicago. After she was assigned to be his assistant and show him around for his time in Chicago, they began work on a project surrounding race and jazz in the city. Hoffman directly learned to shoot handheld and work with sound from Rouch. Hoffman conceptually became interested in cinéma vérité and the idea of shared anthropology- taking form in a collaborative approach to filmmaking with nontraditional documentaries, and often putting video equipment in the hands of the subjects.

This work connected Hoffman to the Chicago film company Kartemquin Films, While at Kartemquin Hoffman directed Golub, which went on to debut at the New York Film Festival. The mission of Kartemquin Films, and a guiding theme in Hoffman's work, is the principle of social inquiry and promoting social change through the medium of film.

Hoffman has worked as a producer and photographer for installations at the Smart Museum of Art and The Block Museum, among others.

Hoffman has collaborated with Barbara Kopple on American Dream in 1990. Hoffman has worked with Michelle Citron on Mixed Greens in 2004.

Hoffman's inclination towards documentary led her to film a behind the scenes look at singer Britney Spears, in a piece called Stages: Three Days in Mexico, featuring cinematography by Albert Maysles in 2002. A few years later, Hoffman was the videographer on Maysles' The Gates, which was a documentary on Jeanne Claude and Christo's Central Park installation. The documentary aired on HBO in 2006.

Hoffman serves on the Board's Advisory Committee to the Community TV Network, a non-profit organization in Chicago which works to promote community development among underrepresented youth through the educational tool and creative process of digital video production. This committee is one of the many places where Hoffman has worked with her colleagues from Kartemquin films, including the founder Gordon Quinn and Peter Kuttner.

In January 2018, Hoffman's film Stages: Three Days in Mexico, showed at the screening of the second season of Cinema 53, a film and discussion series at the University of Chicago's Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry. The season series: "Women Make Docs," continued Cinema 53's mission to present films made by women and people of color.

Filmography