CHAIRMAN | JEROME GARY
Jerome Gary is an Academy Award and Emmy nominated filmmaker and teacher. He is the
Chairman of Visionaire Media and the MENA Media Fund, which in association with the US
Department of State, invests in media in the Middle East and North Africa. Currently, the fund has more than twenty projects in various stages of development or production. Thus far, one feature film and eight pilots have been produced; five have gone to series; three have had a second season and one a third season. His film credits include the Academy Award nominated
Pumping Iron; Stripper; Old Boyfriends; The Gathering; Life After Death; and Generation Iron.
And in television, The Russians (TNT), Laughs (HBO); Rebel Highway (Showtime); On the Road in America (three seasons/Sundance; MBCI); American Caravan; Arab Muslim Women, and Trading Places.
He also served as the President of Production at Cinema 5 (1978-1980), an independent film
studio; President of Visionaire Communications (1981- 86); and the Strategic Director for USC’s
Institute for Creative Technologies (2000-2006). He has been the recipient of more than $32
million in federal grants for media and public diplomacy related projects and has worked
extensively in the Middle East since 2004.
While very active in film and television, for thirteen years he was senior lecturer in screenwriting
and directing at the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film and Television Studies.
He was the Senior Screenwriting Instructor (equivalent of Chair) for seven years and the Senior
Directing Instructor for three. He was on the directing faculty at the University of Southern
California School of Cinema and Television for ten years. He has taught directing, screenwriting,
and storytelling at the Los Angeles Film School, Esalen Institute, Yale University, Dartmouth,
The University of Hawaii and in numerous foreign countries. In 2006, 2007 and 2008, he went to
Afghanistan three times, leading teams of 10 teachers to teach two-week media capacity building
in Kandahar. Graduation certificates were awarded to 138 participants. Since 2018, he has taught
storytelling and screenwriting to more than 700 students, filmmakers and teachers in
masterclasses in Cairo, Tunis, Rabat (3), Marrakech (2) and Beirut (2). He has also taught
storytelling to traumatized children in Kandahar and Kabul.
He produced iDiplomacy, a two-day symposium on citizen diplomacy at the Gallup Organization sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Gallup. He has twice been spokesperson for the Media Committee at the DOHA forum. He has published ‘papers’ and lectured on Trauma and Fractured Narrative’ in Beirut, Cairo, Rabat and at the Naval Postgraduate School
in Monterey. He was also President of the Jury at the Carthage Film Festival and the Rabat
Festival des Auteurs.
He graduated from Yale University with Honors in History of the Arts and Letters and is a
member of the WGA and DGA. He is married to Mary Lambert, the film director, and they have a son, Jordan.