Mitchell Block

Who is Mitchell Block?

Mitchell Block is an American filmmaker whose 2010 film Poster Girl was nominated for Academy Award for Best Documentary and who Executive Produced the Academy Award winning documentary short film Big Mama for HBO in 2000.

Block attended the Hun School of Princeton, graduating in 1968. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in fine arts from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where he majored in television and film production,and was awarded an MBA from the Columbia Business School.

In 1990, film makers posted a protest to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences arguing that Block, as a member of Documentary Steering Committee that selects films as nominees, had a conflict of interest because his company Direct Cinema owns the rights to three of the five films selected as nominees for best documentary feature, while Michael Moore's Roger & Me was omitted. The Academy's Executive Director, Bruce Davis remarked, "Mitch Block said firmly and unequivocally that he thought that Roger & Me should be one of the nominees."