Andrea Blaugrund Nevins

Andrea Blaugrund Nevins is a writer, director, and producer living in Los Angeles.

Biography

Nevins was born in New York City, where she attended the Chapin School.^[1][2] Her father is Dr. Stanley Blaugrund, the former Director of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. Her mother, Dr. Annette Blaugrund, was Senior Curator of Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings at the New-York Historical Society, and guest curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, L.I.^[3] Nevins credits hearing problems as a child for heightening her sense of vision.^[4] She said she "fell madly in love with documentaries while in high school and college" when she first saw the work of Barbara Kopple and Errol Morris.^[5]

Nevins graduated from Harvard University where she took visual arts classes and majored in Social Studies.^[6] Her thesis was titled The Renaissance of a Housing Project: D Street and Its People.^[7]

Early career

After graduating she gained experience as a sports reporter in North Carolina and was a staff writer for The Gainesville Sun from 1986 until October 1988. One of her newspaper articles featured noted environmental activist Kiki Carter.^[8] Nevins and two other staff writers, Mitch Stacy and Lisa Trei, won first place in the Excellence in Medical Journalism Awards for a six-part series titled "Too Poor to be Sick."^[9] She worked at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. She married David Nevins in 1996 who later became an executive with Showtime.

Nevins worked on a 1994 documentary for A&E on Hillary Clinton titled Hillary Rodham Clinton: changing the rules^[10] and a 1995 documentary on Jesse Jackson titled I Am Somebody.^[11][12] In 1998, she was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Documentary (Short Subject) for her first independent film Still Kicking: The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies.^[13] She shared credit with director Mel Damski who directed episodes of the hit television shows M*A*S*H and Barnaby Jones.^[14]

Rare Bird films

Nevins' had taken time from her career to raise three children, but was determined to return to documentary directing and production.^[15] She met Cristan Reilly, also a mother of three, and teamed up to direct and produce The Other F Word. The project led the two to create Rare Bird Films. The choices Nevins made as director surprised critics with "ironic twists" that showed how former punk rockers "balance their anarchic personalities with 21st century parenting."^[16] Oscilloscope Laboratories and Showtime purchased The Other F Word. Oscilloscope's Adam Yauch initially had reservations about the premise of the documentary, but said he was glad he "didn't go with my first instinct" and called it a "beautiful and touching film."^[17]
Nevins says she lets the story unfold as she's directing and "you hope that you're going to be led in a more magical direction than you could ever anticipate."^[18] Nevins' additional directorial projects with Rare Bird Films are:

• State of Play: Happiness, aired on HBO in 2014
• Play it Forward , chosen to premiere at the Opening Gala of the 2015 Tribeca / ESPN Sports Film Festival^[19]
• Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie, to premiere on Hulu in 2018. Barbie the Documentary

Personal life

In 1996, she married David Nevins in Shelter Island Heights, New York.^[20] They have three children and live in Los Angeles. She is a founding member of IKAR, a non-demoninational spiritual community^[21] which was named one of the 50 most influential Jewish non-profits.^[22] Nevins volunteers with UNICEF USA and sits on the regional board of directors for Southern California.^[23] She is also the founder, along with Los Angeles’ First Lady, Amy Elaine Wakeland, and several other women, of The XX Fund, a donor advised fund to help under served women and girls in Los Angeles.^[24]

References

External links

• Andrea Blaugrund Nevins on IMDb