9 documentaries - 21 years
1997-2018
the primetime broadcast television documentaries
of Catherine Ryan and Gary Weimberg
Meet Dr Diamond … and prepare to be smitten. Learn more about your brain, about her brain, and about how her discoveries reshaped all our brains. Her research sparked 3 paradigm-shattering revolutions in science, all the more amazing since it came at a time when few women entered science at all. With charm and joy, she became a role model for anyone, male or female, getting rated as the 2nd most popular college professor in the world by the NYTimes. Emmy nominated, awarded Best Science documentary of the year in 3 nations and eleven film festivals.
Free study guides: grades 5-12 and college to PhD
Their country asked them to kill.
Their hearts asked them to stop.
A portrait of eight US soldiers during the Iraq War,
facing the most difficult decision of their lives:
To kill or not to kill?
What would you do when your nation puts a rifle in your hands and another person in the gunsight?
The story of 4 who pulled the trigger and 4 who did not.
Broadcast on PBS. Nominated for a national Emmy Award. Winner of 8 “Best Documentary” and “Audience Choice” film festival awards.
On the curriculum and in use at West Point Military Academy, VA Hospitals, PTSD Suicide Prevention programs, as well as and Quaker, Mennonite and other traditional peace-oriented religious churches/organizations.
Profoundly moving, profoundly truthful, profoundly painful, and profoundly inspiring. We interviewed over 400 women and girls to learn the most important themes to cover and then filmed in depth with the 40 who best revealed those truths, those emotions, those relationships, those hopes and fears collectively portraying the the mother-daughter bond from cradle to grave.
This award winning primetime ABC and PBS documentary was called one of the most honest and emotional depictions of the male experience ever put to film. Culled from interviews with over 600 men and boys.
The hidden story of one boy, two families, three nationalities, a film whose broadcast lead to Presidential Clemency and freedom for Ernesto’s mother after 19 years in prison.
“… an extra-ordinary film which captures the anguish of a family torn apart and puts a powerful political story into human terms. It is heartrending, but also exhilarating as it portrays the courage of a mother and her son, facing an ordeal, while holding on to their dream of justice.”
– Howard Zinn, author of The People’s History of the United States
A story of love, courage, and survival in wartime.
Meet Maria Serrano in the midst of the civil war in El Salvador of the 1980’s:
Wife. Mother. Campesino. Revolutionary. This politically ground-breaking film was cited as the single most important piece of media leading to the end of the war.
Short listed for an Academy Award nomination.
A 100 year history of a 100 room mansion: art and architecture, murders and millionaires, a story of the unexpected – California’s Chateau Carolands, built by the 2nd richest woman in the world yet the expense nearly ruined her. A home so grand it enchanted and destroyed successive generations of the ultra-rich who fell under it’s spell. And yet, surprise! A happy ending, with the Chateau recieving a magnificient restoration – a masterpiece preserved.
The classic turn-of-the-century Jewish and Italian mob, Lansky, Bugsy, Luciano, Capone, revealed with panache … in all their raw bloody brutal drama – Emmy Award Winner. A Fox Television primetime 4 hour mini-series, Episode 1 directed, written, and edited by Gary.