American filmmaker Rob Epstein was BOTD in 1955. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, he moved to San Francisco when he was 19, working as an usher at the Castro Theatre. He studied filmmaking at San Francisco State University, and became a production assistant for documentary films, where he met filmmaker Peter Adair. In the 1970s, he and Adair formed the Mariposa Film Group with four other filmmakers. Their first collectively-directed project was the documentary Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives, featuring interviews with 26 gay and lesbian people talking about their lives. First screened in 1977, it was given a limited national release in 1978, before being aired nationally on prime-time public television. Praised for its positive and unsensationalist presentation of gay and lesbian identity, it became a landmark in American LGBTQ representation. Epstein’s next project, The Times of Harvey Milk, profiling the life and assassination of gay politician Harvey Milk, was released in 1984. Critically acclaimed, it won the Oscar for best documentary feature, significantly contributing to Milk’s legacy as an LGBTQ icon. In 1987, Epstein formed the production company Moving Pictures with Jeffrey Friedman. Their first co-directed documentary, 1989’s Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, recounted the history of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and profiled many of the victims of HIV/AIDS memorialised in the Quilt project. Screened on cable network HBO and given a theatrical release worldwide, it won Epstein a second Oscar (shared with Friedman) for best documentary. They garnered further success with their 1996 documentary The Celluloid Closet, based on Vito Russo‘s book about the history of LGBTQ (mis)representation in Hollywood film. Narrated by Lily Tomlin, it featured interviews with actors Tony Curtis, Antonio Fargas, Whoopi Goldberg, Farley Granger, Tom Hanks and Susan Sarandon; directors John Schlesinger and Jan Oxenberg; screenwriters Mart Crowley, Harvey Fierstein, Arthur Laurents, Ron Nyswaner, Paul Rudnick, Barry Sandler and Gore Vidal; film historian Richard Dyer; and commentators Susie Bright, Quentin Crisp and Armistead Maupin (who scripted Tomlin’s commentary). Originally screened on HBO in 1996, it became a critical and commercial hit, winning an Emmy Award for Epstein’s and Friedman’s direction, though was critiqued for its reluctance to embrace New Queer Cinema and more transgressive representations of homosexuality. Their other projects include Paragraph 175, a documentary about Nazi Germany’s persecution of LGBTQ people; And the Oscar Goes to for Turner Classic Movies; and the Grammy-winning 2021 documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice. They made their narrative feature debut with 2010’s Howl, a biopic about Allen Ginsberg starring James Franco, followed by Lovelace, a revisionist portrait of Deep Throat porn actress Linda Lovelace. Their most recent project, Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music, reimagines American history as an over-the-top queer-inflected counter-cultural musical extravaganza. The recipient of numerous industry awards, Epstein has served on the board of governors for the Sundance Institute and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He lives in California, where he holds a professorship in film at the California College of the Arts.