Gary Leva

Filmmaker Gary Leva has produced over 200 documentaries, as well as a broad variety of content for various platforms, from theatrical releases to network broadcasts to streaming media. His 9-part documentary series, Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy, premiered on MAX as well as in theaters nationwide, accompanying re-releases of some of Eastwood’s greatest films. His feature documentary, Fog City Mavericks, which highlights 100 years in the history of San Francisco's filmmaking community, had its world premiere at the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival prior to its continuing life on cable television, disc and streaming.

Leva's documentaries have made a lasting contribution to the history of film. His award-winning A Legacy of Filmmakers premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and received a New York Film Society screening at Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum. This documentary illuminates the creation of Francis Ford Coppola's landmark film company American Zoetrope, set against the changing landscape of American cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The film is now a part of the curricula at several top universities.

Leva's celebrated documentaries on the cinema of George Lucas span the entire range of Lucas' career, from his earliest student films to his first feature, THX 1138, to the Star Wars series and beyond. His collections of documentaries on filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood and Stanley Kubrick are often regarded as the top anthology on each of these master's works.

Having earned a distinguished reputation as a leader in his field, Leva continues to work with the top filmmakers of our time, including Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Robert Redford, Oliver Stone and many others.

Beyond the world of cinema, Leva has produced documentaries on subjects as varied as the struggle for investigative journalists to stay relevant in the Internet age and the ways in which the achievements of Alexander the Great are reflected in our modern lives.

Other projects include the award-winning narrative feature film, Plan B, starring Jon Cryer, the mockumentary R2-D2: Beneath the Dome, broadcast nationally on Fox, and 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year, broadcast nationally on TCM.

Leva is an adjunct professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Pepperdine University, and has been a guest speaker at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.