Julian T. Pinder

Julian T. Pinder is a Canadian-born film director, producer, and writer. He created, directed and executive produced Fire Chasers, a four-part Netflix Original series with Leonardo DiCaprio, released in September 2017, and was nominated for the US Award for Social Justice at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in 2010.[1]

Julian T. Pinder with dog, Pioneertown, California, 2017

Pinder founded Deliberate Films in 2007 and his titles include feature films, documentaries, television series, music videos, and commercial campaigns. His films have been released on HBO, Showtime, Netflix, and Amazon.

Jesus Town USA, his last feature documentary, a Sky Atlantic, Showtime, and Netflix feature was initially released in the UK, and received 4 stars in the Daily Mail, "pick of the week" in the Sunday Times and "critic's choice" in The Telegraph, and was heralded as a "factual Napoleon Dynamite" in The Globe and Mail.[2]

His first feature, LAND, which follows the darkly comedic trials of a group of American resort developers in Nicaragua at the time when Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega swept back into power, premiered at the Hot Docs Film Festival in 2010 to four and five star reviews. It was nominated for Best Feature at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and was labeled by one publication as "a goofier Joseph Conrad story seen through a Hunter S. Thompson haze". He went on to direct and produce three more feature documentaries which were released theatrically and on DVD through KinoSmith and Cargo Releasing.

His documentary Trouble In The Peace (2012) was distributed theatrically and provided part of the story line – including excerpts as part of a film within a film – for his 2016 feature film Population Zero, a mocumentary in which Pinder played a version of himself. Population Zero was screened successfully at the Newport Beach, Whistler, and Napa Valley film festivals to sold-out audiences.

Early in his career Pinder worked as a producer with Sarrazin Couture Entertainment overseeing numerous projects with Lifetime and CTV, and worked closely with Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier (Watermark, Manufactured Landscapes), and Helen Shaver (The Unit, Law and Order). During this period Pinder also directed a series of short art-house films in wartime Kosovo and Bosnia.

Apart from feature film and television, Pinder has also created commercial campaigns, MTV Rock the Vote spots, and music videos for Grammy-nominated band The Milk Carton Kids starring actress Amanda Seyfried, and more recently produced Blondie's two comeback videos.

In his earlier years, Pinder opened a restaurant and jazz bar which became a well-known Toronto establishment in the arts scene and hosted, among other events, the Chet Baker Jazz Festival. He also founded one of the first "urban wineries", Vintage One Wines

In 2019 he co-founded the Pioneertown Film Festival, a boutique annual event held in the movie town built by Roy Rogers, with competition and non-competition indy categories as well as a special series dedicated to restored iconic Western films. The festival also includes Masterclass events held by well-known actors, writers, directors, producers, cinematographers, and boasts programmers from top film festivals including Cannes.

He currently lives in the mountains outside of Pioneertown, California on an off-grid ranch.[3]