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Thought Leader: Henry Ansbacher

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Henry Ansbacher is the founder of Just Media and has served as its executive director since 2000. Just Media's mission is to raise awareness of current social and environmental issues in the broadest audience through the development and production of innovative and compelling media projects. Just Media is at the vanguard of a rapidly growing movement promoting media as a potent agent for community benefit. In his leadership position at Just Media, Ansbacher has produced over 25 documentary shorts featuring social entrepreneurs trying to make the world a better place. In 2005 Ansbacher and Just Media won four Emmys, including Best Program Feature for a six-part magazine-format TV series about social entrepreneurs.

The feature film Chiefs, a documentary about the Wyoming Indian High School basketball team, was Ansbacher's first feature film producing credit. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it earned the Best Documentary prize, and went on to national broadcast on PBS. Since that time, Ansbacher has collaborated with director Daniel Junge on a number of broadcast documentaries, including Reading Your Rights, We Are PHAMALY, Come Back to Sudan and the Emmy-winning Big Blue Bear.

Their critically acclaimed Iron Ladies of Liberia, a documentary about the turbulent first year in office of Africa's first freely elected female head of state, premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival and has been screened at film festivals all over the world, garnering the Target Top Ten award for Best Documentary at AFI Dallas, the Chopard Spirit of Freedom award for Best Documentary at the Bahamas International Film Festival, and the Greg Gund Memorial Standing Up Award at the Cleveland International Film Festival. It has been screened worldwide as part of the Why Democracy series, and on PBS's Independent Lens.

Ansbacher's most recent producing effort with Junge is They Killed Sister Dorothy, a feature-length documentary about the murder of Sister Dorothy Stang, an environmental activist working with the poor of Brazil's Amazon rainforest. The film premiered at the 2008 South by Southwest Film Festival, where it won both the juried and audience awards for Best Documentary. It will be screened next at the Seattle International Film Festival.

Ansbacher served as executive producer on the theatrically-released Occupation: Dreamland and the soon-to-be released Wesley Willis's Joyrides, in addition to directing the documentary Witness: From a Deep Place, which has been screened at festivals in the U.S. and Europe.

Henry Ansbacher received his BA from Colorado College and his MA in psychology from the University of Denver and has worked around the state as a counselor. He lives in Denver with his wife, Karma, and their three children.

 

View Henry's recent work and related links:

[Headlines] Henry's headlines of the past year, what questions he's grappling with and his personal big moments of 2008.