Matt Heineman Receives Country School 2012 Alumni Award
Filmmaker Matt Heineman ’98 was named the 2012 Alumni Award winner. While on campus to receive the award, Mr. Heineman spoke to Middle and Upper School students about his journey to becoming a filmmaker. He also showed clips from his documentary on the healthcare industry, entitled ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare.
The film, which originally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, is directed by Heineman and Susan Froemke and asks provocative questions about our “broken” medical system. According to the Sundance press release: “The film explores what can be done to it…and save the very health of our nation.”
After graduating from Dartmouth College in 2005 with a degree in history, Heineman and a group of friends founded The Young Americans Project (TYAP), a multi-media undertaking to try to figure out what makes their generation tick. He traveled the country for three months interviewing a wide range of America’s youth and, in the process, fell in love with filmmaking.
After six months at NBC sports, he was hired by HBO in 2007 to work on THE ALZHEIMER’S PROJECT, an Emmy-nominated documentary series that premiered in May, 2009. In addition to his work on two one-hour films exploring the human and scientific sides of this devastating disease, he co-produced the Supplementary Series of short films for the project.
In 2011, Heineman's work on TYAP culminated in the commercial release of OUR TIME—an hour-long documentary about what it’s like to be young in America—on the Documentary Channel, Amazon, and Hulu. He has directed, shot, and edited several short films and commercials. His photography can be viewed at heinemanphotos.com.
To follow the progress of the film and to find out when it will be distributed to a theater near you, visit the Escape Fire Facebook page.
New Canaan Country School
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