Thom Powers

Thom Powers was born in Detroit. Instead of going to college, he worked for the comic book publisher Fantagraphics Books in Los Angeles and Seattle. After seven years in the print world, he turned to documentary film. For the past fourteen years, he has lived in New York City, where he hosts Stranger than Fiction, a documentary screening series at the IFC Center. He has directed documentaries for HBO, PBS, Sundance Channel and other outlets. Since 2000, he has taught a class on documentary development at New York University, and he is currently writing a book about the rise of American documentary in the sixties and seventies for Faber & Faber. He serves as co-chair of the Cinema Eye Honors, inaugurated this past year, recognizing excellence in non-fiction film. In the last year, his travel included serving on juries for CPH:DOX in Denmark and Doc Aviv in Israel. He has programmed for TIFF since 2006.