Nancy Buirski Dies: ‘Loving’ Producer Also Directed ‘Midnight Cowboy’ Doc & Founded Documentary Film Festival

Nancy Buirski, a PGA Award winner who produced the 2016 film Loving that was inspired by her documentary, directed several films including last year’s Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy and founded the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, died August 29. Her company Augusta Films announced the news but did not provide details.

Buirski began her career as photographer and photo editor for The New York Times and in 1998 founded the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which she would lead for a decade. Her first directing job was on The Loving Story (2011), a documentary about Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple who married in 1958 without knowing their union was illegal in Virginia, where they lived and went on to face an ultimately successful legal journey that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 as Loving v Virginia.

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The film was shortlisted for an Oscar nom and received multiple honors, including a Peabody Award and News & Documentary Emmy. It became the inspiration for Loving, which starred Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton as the Lovings. Negga earned an Academy Award nom for Best Actress, and its writer-director Jeff Nichols got a Spirit Award nom. Buirski shared a Stanley Kramer Award from the PGA for Loving in 2017.

“The film is an unusual telling of a civil rights story,” she said in Icarus Films’ press notes for The Loving Story. “Though often overlooked among the pantheon of civil rights struggles, Mildred and Richard Lovings’ quest to live together as husband and wife in the state of Virginia was a pivotal one. A white man and a part-black, part-Rappahannock woman were in love and did not understand why their marriage was a criminal offense in the eyes of state. Their effort to make this right — to not live in shame or in exile — is universal, metaphorically reminding us of oppressed and exiled people everywhere. The Lovings were banished from their home for their commitment to each other, and they fought long and hard to return to it, to love each other within the bosom of their family.”

Buirski’s next directing and producing project was Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq, a 2013 American Masters documentary for PBS about a ballerina who contracted polio while on tour and was paralyzed for life. She then helmed and produced By Sidney Lumet (2015), another American Masters doc about the five-time Oscar-nominated director of Network, Dog Day Afternoon and many others.

RELATED: Venice Review: Nancy Buirski’s ‘Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy’

Buirski continued to write, direct and/or produce documentaries including Althea for American Masters (2014), The Rape of Recy Taylor (2017) and A Crime on the Bayou (2020). Her final film was Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy, a documentary about the only X-rated film to win the Best Picture Oscar. It premiered at Venice last year and went on to play Telluride and many other festivals. Read Deadline’s review of the film here.

Within a week after that film’s Lido debut, Buirski signed a development deal with Cineflix Productions.

“At the end of our first conversation together, I knew that I wanted to work with Nancy on whatever she was doing next, and Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy became that project,” J.C. Mills, Cineflix Productions’ President and Head of Content, said in announcing the deal. “Her passion for filmmaking is clear in this beautifully crafted story that seamlessly weaves multiple storylines.”

Susan Margolin, Buirski’s frequent collaborator and producer, said Wednesday: “The field has lost a giant today. Nancy was a completely original thinker and a visionary. With every film she pushed the limits of the art form with her kaleidoscopic, unique approach to storytelling. She was an exceptionally generous supporter of other artists in the field, and will be mourned by so many. We are devastated by this loss.”

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