Tami Gold
Professor of Film and Media Studies

Tami Gold is a professor at Hunter College, a filmmaker, writer and visual artist. Her films have consistently been at the forefront of social justice, focusing on issues of race, gender, sexual identity, labor and the role of police in the United States. They have reached audiences near and far, airing on PBS, HBO, Lifetime TV, The Learning Channel and on television in Nigeria, South Africa, Cuba, Germany, France, Turkey, Serbia, Mexico, China and Vietnam. Her work has also screened at the MOMA, the Whitney, The Chicago Arts Institute, The Kennedy Center, the American and British Film Institutes, Sundance, Tribeca and The New York Film Festival, and in over 150 film festivals worldwide. She is also the recipient of Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships.

In 2017, Tami was selected (with Sha Sha Feng) to present SURVELLANCE: Silence = Death, an interactive art installation that looks at Islamophobia, at the Codes and Modes conference.

Tami Gold is a contributing author of Think/Point/Shoot: Media Ethics, Technology and Global Change, Routledge/Focal Press (2016). Think/Point/Shoot gives students a thorough overview of the role of ethics in modern media creation.

In 2014, Tami was selected (with Sha Sha Feng) to exhibit a work-in-progress of their art installation entitled SURVELLANCE: Silence = Death at the (e)merge Art Fair in Washington, DC. Also in 2014, Tami completed the documentary PUZZLES: When Hate Came to Town (with David Pavlosky). This film tells the story of a violent hate crime in a LGBT bar and exposes the connection between joblessness, homophobia, intolerance, and, ultimately, violence. In the same year Tami received a fellowship from PARC and traveled throughout the West Bank, Palestine. Based on this experience she produced “Palestine 2014 Life Under Israeli Occupation,” a collection of her photography and writings, which she exhibited at museums and colleges in New York and Mexico.

In 2011, she directed PASSIONATE POLITICS, a documentary about Charlotte Bunch, an outspoken lesbian feminist trailblazer, charismatic builder of bridges and author of the transformative concept that Women’s Rights are Human Rights, which aired on PBS and on television through Africa, Latin America and Europe. Currently (2017) PASSIONATE POLITICS is touring throughout China.

Tami Gold directed (with Larry Shore) RFK IN THE LAND OF APARTHEID: A Ripple of Hope, a documentary about Robert Kennedy’s visit to South Africa in 1966 and the connection between the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, a Prime Time Broadcast on PBS in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

She has been studying and teaching different popular movements and in 2006, she produced and directed a video report about the popular struggle in Oaxaca, Mexico, LAND RAIN AND FIRE (with Gerardo Renique), which aired internationally in Turkey, Korea, Free Speech TV and on Spanish language TV. She then authored a companion article about the role of media in this struggle – A RAINBOW IN THE MIDST OF A HURRICANE (Radical Teacher 2008).

Issues of aggressive policing have been central to Tami Gold’s work. In 2004, she produced and directed EVERY MOTHER’S SON (with Kelly Anderson), which profiles three mothers whose sons were killed by the NYPD and unexpectedly find themselves united to seek justice and transform their grief into an opportunity for profound social change. The film won the Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award, was nominated for an EMMY and broadcast on the PBS series POV. She has been on WABC, NPR and PBS addressing Stop and Frisk and other related issues.

In 2000, Tami Gold traveled to Vietnam, the Czech Republic and China researching the role of tobacco multinationals on public health. The result of this work is the documentary MAKING A KILLING (with Kelly Anderson); a documentary that addresses the marketing practices of the tobacco industry in the developing world. MAKING A KILLING premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival, was screened for delegates at the World Health Organization and aired in Nigeria, Serbia and Vietnam.

The award-winning documentary ANOTHER BROTHER, produced and directed by Tami Gold, was broadcast on PBS in 1998. ANOTHER BROTHER is a biographical mosaic of one ordinary yet extraordinary man, Clarence Fitch, an African American Vietnam War veteran.

OUT AT WORK: Lesbians and Gay Men on the Job, produced and directed by Tami Gold and Kelly Anderson, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997. This documentary is the first and remains the only film to explore the impact of workplace discrimination against lesbians and gay men on the job. Following the release of OUT AT WORK Tami authored a companion article MAKING OUT AT WORK (Social Text – Routledge).

Tami’s other documentaries include JUGGLING GENDER: Politics, Sex and Identity, screened at the New York Film Festival’s video series; SIGNED SEALED AND DELIVERED, Labor Struggle in the Post Office, aired on PBS, screened at MOMA; and LOOKING FOR LOVE: Teenage Mothers broadcast on WNET/TV, WOR/TV, WNYC/TV, The Learning Channel, screened at the Newark Museum.

In 2005 Tami Gold designed a cross-cultural documentary course, which she taught at the University of Cape Town in partnership with Hunter College Film and Media Studies Department. This unique course brought fifteen students from both Hunter College and the University of Cape Town together to study and produce documentaries about different aspects of life in South Africa.

Working in conjunction with the Center for Cuban Studies, Tami Gold organized a course in 1993 where she brought Hunter College graduate students to Havana, Cuba. Students visited the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), met with Cuban filmmakers and presented their work at The International School of Film and Television (EICTV) in San Antonio de los Baños, Havana, Cuba.