KEN KIMMELMAN is a two-time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who received a National Emmy Award airing on TV, including CNN, and an Award for his contributions to Sesame Street. He also received Emmy and ACE nominations as a director of the animated TV series Doug. As president of Imagery Film Ltd., he produced award-winning films for the United Nations. He teaches the film studies class here “If It Moves It Can Move You”: Opposites in the Cinema. He is also one of the teachers of the Critical Inquiry: A Workshop in the Visual Arts.
His film Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana, based on the 1925 Nation prize-winning poem by Eli Siegel, won the “Best US Short,“ Avignon/New York; “Gold Remi Award”—Worldfest Houston; “Platinum Best of Show”—Aurora Awards; “Grand Festival Award in the Arts”—Berkeley Film Festival, among many others, and aired on PBS [Brochure]. His film Thomas Comma, the animated adventure of a lonely comma looking for the right sentence, won many awards, including “Grand Festival Animation Award”—Berkeley Film Festival, and a “Platinum Remi Award”—Worldfest Houston. It aired on PBS stations nationwide [Brochure].
In 1968 he produced and directed the documentary People Are Trying to Put Opposites Together, about Eli Siegel teaching an Aesthetic Realism class, televised on WNET-TV Channel 13. He also produced theatricals, TV commercials, film trailers, and a film for New York City Opera’s Beatrix Cenci, performed at Lincoln Center. He made many films for “Sesame Street,” including Elmo’s World, and was a director of the animated TV series Clifford’s Puppy Days, Daria and The Wild Thornberrys. He also produced films for the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. In collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center, he is currently in development on an animated feature film—Riding on Duke’s Train about Duke Ellington.
Ken Kimmelman taught film and animation at New York University, and the School of Visual Arts. As a film lecturer, he has presented talks here and abroad, including in France, Canada, and Israel. At the Modern Language Association’s annual conference in Los Angeles, he gave a “Special Presentation” titled Aesthetic Realism and the Literary Cinema of Ken Kimmelman. In the Artists Talk on Art series given at the School of Visual Arts, he presented Aesthetic Realism: The Opposites of Technique and Feeling in Film. He gave presentations of Film—and the “Art of Enjoying Justice”! at the Master’s Program at Syracuse University; the City University of New York; Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, and the Jefferson Market Library in New York City. As a lecturer on the answer to bullying, he has spoken at schools, colleges, and organizations,
He has been a guest lecturer at the Manhattan School of Music. He has presented papers on the lives and work of D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Ingmar Bergman, and others, and his articles have been published in journals and newspapers across the country. His work was part of the 2006 Whitney Museum Biennial Peace Tower.