Academy Award Winner Dustin Lance Black is a screenwriter, filmmaker and social activist, best known for writing the screenplay of Harvey Milk’s biopic MILK and for aiding in overturning California’s discriminatory Proposition 8.
He has won the Academy Award® and two WGA Awards for Best Original Screenplay for MILK, the biopic of the late civil rights activist Harvey Milk starring Sean Penn. He is also a founding board member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), which successfully led the federal cases for marriage equality in California and Virginia with lawyers David Boise and Ted Olson, putting an end to California’s discriminatory Proposition 8.
In 2012 Black merged his creative and civil rights work with “8”, a play based on the Federal Proposition 8 trial. “8’s” LA cast included George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Martin Sheen, Kevin Bacon and John C. Reilly. The play was broadcast live, has been staged in eight countries and all fifty states and continues to break viewership records online.
An honors graduate of UCLA’s School of Film and Television, Black began his career as an art director and quickly transitioned to directing documentaries and commercials. Black’s documentaries ON THE BUS (2001) and MY LIFE WITH COUNT DRACULA (2003) debuted to acclaim and led to a successful stint producing and directing TLC and BBC’s hit program FAKING IT, which received notices for its unflinching sociological commentaries. Read more.
