Sam Pollard
Spring 2023 Writer-In-Residence
We are thrilled to welcome Emmy award-winning filmmaker Sam Pollard, who graduated from Baruch College in 1973 and returns to his alma mater exactly fifty years later, the very first Harman Writer to be a Baruch alum. With a career spanning over forty years, Pollard has worked extensively in film editing, directing, producing and screenwriting, and is lauded for his work in documentary films. Along with the aforementioned Emmys, he was been nominated for an Academy Award for the film 4 Little Girls with filmmaker Spike Lee, and has won a Career Achievement Award presented by the International Documentary Association and a Peabody Award for “chronicling the Black experience and illuminating complicated historical figures across film and television.” Pollard’s most recent film Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power was released in the Fall of 2022. Critically acclaimed, the documentary focuses on the courage and tenacity of the Black residents of Lowndes County, Alabama – an area which was demographically 80% Black but had zero black voters – during a “seminal moment in the quest for Civil Rights”.
Photo by Simbarashe Cha
Pollard will be teaching a class on screenwriting and documentary filmmaking. If you are interested in watching one of Pollard’s documentaries, MLK/FBI is available for Baruch students through the Newman Library.