Ferne Pearlstein is a highly accomplished and award-winning cinematographer, writer, director, and editor, renowned for her exceptional work in the documentary film industry. With a career spanning multiple decades, Pearlstein has garnered numerous accolades and has had her films screened and broadcast globally.
Her most recent documentary, The Last Laugh, premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and went on to be showcased at over a hundred festivals worldwide, including Hot Docs, BFI London, Traverse City, IDFA, Rome, Jerusalem, San Francisco Jewish, Traverse City, Chicago International, and many others. The film received widespread critical acclaim, boasting a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Last Laugh was released in theaters in March 2017 and had its broadcast premiere on PBS's Independent Lens series in April 2017, where it was runner-up for the 2016-17 Audience Award. Pearlstein's previous feature documentary, Sumo East and West, premiered at the Tribeca, Los Angeles, and Melbourne International Film Festivals, and was also broadcast nationwide on Independent Lens and around the world.
Based in New York City, Pearlstein holds post-graduate degrees in documentary film and photography from Stanford University and the International Center of Photography. An acclaimed documentary director of photography, she has worked on dozens of films, including Ramona Diaz's Imelda, for which she won the Excellence in Cinematography Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
Pearlstein is one of a select few female cinematographers featured in Kodak's long-running "On Film" ad campaign in American Cinematographer magazine. Her directing credits include co-director of Dita and the Family Business for PBS, and three short films, including her debut Raising Nicholas, which premiered at the 2003 Sundance and San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals.
Among her other credits are cinematographer on Academy Award winner Alex Gibney's segment of Freakonomics, DP on three-time Academy Award nominee Deborah Dickson's Ruthie and Connie for HBO, and DP on The Voice of the Prophet, where she met her longtime collaborator and husband Robert Edwards. Pearlstein has also worked as associate producer, editor, and 2nd unit director/DP on Edwards' feature films, including Land of the Blind and When I Live My Life Over Again.
Currently, Pearlstein and Edwards are executive producing a feature documentary on the Cola Wars for History's new "History 100" series, and directing a new independent documentary about the harrowing journey of Daniel Weinstock, a gifted photographer from Mexico who spent four years photographing inside psychiatric institutions in his home country only to be thrown into one of those institutions himself.
