Lee Hirsch

Who is Lee Hirsch?

Lee Hirsch is a documentary filmmaker. Hirsch is a graduate of The Putney School in Vermont, and a graduate of Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts. He wrote and directed the documentary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony.

Hirsch also contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture edited by Paul D. Miller.

His film Bully premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. Bully follows several families from across ethnic, cultural and geographic boundaries as they grapple with the tragedy their family has faced as a result of bullying. Several of the families profiled in the film had lost a child because he or she became fed up with the mostly mental and sometimes physical abuse they experienced on a daily, even hourly basis at school, on the school bus, and in their communities.

In a screening in Minneapolis in September 2011, Director Lee Hirsch told the audience during the post-film Q & A that he, himself, had been bullied, and that was part of the inspiration for the film, and for the direction he took it. In an interview with Twin Cities Jewish news website TC Jewfolk after the screening Hirsch continued: