Amy Ziering

American documentary filmmaker, producer and director (b. September 1962, Massachusetts); lives and works in Brentwood, Los Angeles. Amy Ziering is best known for her collaborative work with the director Kirby Dick; they co-directed two feature-length documentaries, and she produced several of his films. Ziering won an Oscar nomination and several other prestigious accolades, including two Emmy Awards. Amy Ziering grew up in Beverly Hills, California. She graduated from Amherst College before rolling into Yale University, where Amy studied with the iconic and controversial French philosopher Jacques Derrida. In 2002, Ziering co-directed a feature-length documentary film about her former teacher, Derrida, with Kirby Dick, their first major collaboration. The movie with Ryuichi Sakamoto's original soundtrack won the Golden Gate Award at San Francisco International Film Festival. She produced Dick's The Invisible War (2012), which exposed the epidemic of rape in US military forces. The film won Emmy Awards and received an Academy Award nomination. Ziering and Dick soon co-founded a production company, Jane Doe Films, jointly working on most projects since then. In 2020, Amy Ziering co-directed her second feature-length documentary with Kirby Dick, On the Record, investigating the sexual harassment allegations against hip-hop producer and industry veteran Russell Simmons. The film won a "Special Mention" award at the Warsaw International Film Festival and received an "Outstanding Documentary" nomination at NAACP's Image Awards in 2021. Ziering and Dick became the first filmmakers to partner with Vanity Fair Magazine for a short film presented in the March 2022 issue as part of a multimedia project exposing sexual harassment in the Old Hollywood studios era.