Alfred R. Kelman
Alfred R. Kelman (born May 17, 1936) is an American film and television documentary producer and director best known for his work on "The Body Human" and the 1984 television version of "A Christmas Carol" starring George C. Scott.His career began in the early days of live television (1962) at the local level as a director for the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, WBZ-TV Boston. Subsequently, an Oscar nominee (1966) for his documentary film The Face of a Genius, an autobiographical study of America’s famed playwright, Eugene O’Neill. It marked the first time in the history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that a film originally produced for television was recognized by the Academy as a nominee for Best Documentary Feature. Fully restored as a 35mm print by UCLA Film & Archive and The Motion Picture Academy, the film was honored in the annual UCLA Festival of Preservation, screened before a live audience of the 35mm print at the Billy Wilder Theater in Los Angeles. March 14, 2013.A mass communications graduate scholar (1959) studying public opinion at Boston University under the aegis of WGBH, a Senior Research Fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies, he also served as a principal of MEDCOM (1968), a publicly traded company and pioneer of the learning industry in the dissemination of medical knowledge to physicians and the public. As Producer. Director & Co-Creator of the groundbreaking CBS documentary series, THE BODY HUMAN (1977), a cinematic exploration of the relationship between biochemistry, medicine and human behavior, he opened the door to LIFELINE, the first non-fiction series, e.g., the practice of medicine, ever carried in prime time by the NBC television network.Kelman is the unprecedented 3-time winner of the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Documentary Feature and a 7 time Emmy wiinner for “Lifeline” and “The Body Human.” One of the few documentary film makers who moved from non-fiction to a 25 year career (1980-2005) as a Producer of movies and mini series for television inclusive of the 3 American commercial networks ABC, CBS, NBC, as well as the pay cable channel HBO. Whether in fiction or non-fiction his work has been characterized by the ever-elusive search for truthful depictions of history and/or reality.