Holly and Paul Fine spent more than 40 years making documentaries for 60 Minutes, 20:20, Nightline, National Geographic, and more.
Join Chesapeake Forum for Lights, Camera, Action: A Legacy of Fine Filmmaking – an evening of fascinating, humorous, and, amazing behind-the-scenes stories from two generations of filmmakers on May 9th at the Academy Art Museum. Enjoy refreshments and light hors d’oeuvres. The event kicks off the 2024 Lectures on the Shore series from the Chesapeake Forum.
Husband and wife filmmakers are rare and entire filmmaking families even rarer, but in the Fine family, it’s the norm. Holly and Paul Fine spent more than 40 years making documentaries for 60 Minutes, 20:20, Nightline, National Geographic, and more. Their son, Sean, has won an Oscar for his filmmaking work.
Holly and Paul Fine met at Chanel 7 in Washington DC where Paul shot and directed and Holly edited and directed. They were known for the distinctive style they employed while giving a human face to complex contemporary issues.
In 1982, they joined CBS where they produced documentaries for CBS Reports and 60 Minutes. Together, they produced stories on just about everyone who has been in the news including, Barbara Streisand, Kirk Douglas, Ray Charles, and the opera singer Denise Graves.
Their 1982 broadcast on the near assassination of Ronald Reagan, The Saving of the President gained them national attention. Their documentary, The Plane That Fell from the Sky, about a mysterious nose dive of a commercial jet in which all 49 passengers and three crew members survived, won them national acclaim.
The Fines’ distinctive and compassionate journalism won them a trophy case full of awards including 4 Peabody Awards, a Columbia Dupont Award, over 80 Emmys, and 50 other national and international citations.
Sean Fine followed his parents into the business but he has been carving his distinctive path with his wife, the filmmaker Andrea Nix Fine. The two of them have been working together for 20 years since meeting at National Geographic.
The first film they worked on together, War/Dance earned Sean and Andrea an Oscar nomination. They followed that with Inocente, which took home the Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 2013. The pair are also Emmy and Peabody Award winners.
Be prepared for an evening of amusing, wild, and surprising stories about the making of some of the most important documentaries of our time. The Fines will be interviewed by their long-time friend and Chesapeake Forum Board Member, Bruce Purdy.
Lights, Camera, Action is Thursday, May 9th from 5:30 – 7:30 PM. In-person tickets are $70, Livestream only tickets are $30. To register, visit https://chesapeakeforum.org.
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