Nancy Buirski, an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker whose eye was honed as a still photographer and picture editor, died Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. He is 78.
The cause has not yet been determined, his sister and only immediate survivor, Judith Cohen, said.
After founding the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in 1998 at Duke University in Durham, NC, and directing it for a decade, Ms. Buirski (pronounced BURR-skee) of his own first documentary, “The Loving Story,” in 2011.
The film explores the case of Mildred and Richard Loving, who faced prison for their illegal interracial marriage in 1958 in Virginia. (He’s part-Black and part-Native American, and she’s white.)
Their challenge to the law resulted in a landmark civil rights ruling by the United States Supreme Court in 1967 that invalidated the state’s anti-miscegenation laws.
The documentary, directed by Ms. Buirski, won an Emmy for outstanding historical programming, long form, and a Peabody Award. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and made its television debut on HBO during Black History Month in 2012.
“Drawing from a wealth of stunning archival footage,” writes Dave Itzkoff The New York Times. “‘The Loving Story’ recreates a pivotal moment in history in unconventional style, anchoring a timely message of marriage equality in a personal, human love story.”
Ms. continued. Buirski to find more stories to tell, drawing on a wide range of voices and experiences.
“Nancy is a completely original thinker and a visionary,” her frequent collaborator and producer, Susan Margolin, said in an email. “In each film he pushes the limits of the art form with his kaleidoscopic, unique approach to storytelling.”
Ms. Buirski directed, co-produced and wrote “Afternoon of a Faun” (2013), about ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, who contracts polio while on tour in 1956; and “By Sidney Lumet” (2015), about the acclaimed filmmaker, both of which were broadcast by PBS on “American Masters.”
He also directed, co-produced and wrote “The Rape of Recy Taylor” (2017), about the 1944 kidnapping of a Black woman by seven white men. Despite their confessions, they were never charged, although in 2011 the Alabama Legislature apologized for the state’s failure to prosecute her attackers.
Critic Roger Ebert called the film “a chilling, infuriating marvel,” and it was awarded the human rights prize at the 74th Venice International Film Festival.
Ms. Buirski went on to direct, co-produce and write “A Crime on the Bayou” (2021) about a 1966 conflict sparked by school integration, and “Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy” ( 2023), which explores John Schlesinger’s 1969 film starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.
He is also a special advisor on “Summer of Soul” (2021), Questlove’s Academy Award-winning concert-film documentary, based on rediscovered footage, about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.
A few years ago, as a photo editor on the international desk at The New York Times, Ms. Buirski is credited with selecting the photo that won the newspaper its first Pulitzer Prize for photography, in 1994.
After searching for a photograph to accompany an article about war and famine in southern Sudan, he selected one by Kevin Carter, a photojournalist in South Africa, of an emaciated child collapsing on his way to a United Nations feeding center while hidden in the background a greedy vulture. .
Praised by Ms. Buirski’s photo of Nancy Lee, The Times’ photo editor at the time. Then he proposed it, strongly, for the front page, because, he remembers saying to another editor, “This is going to win the paper’s first Pulitzer Prize for photography.”
The photo appeared on an inside page in the issue of March 26, 1993, but the reaction from readers, concerned about the fate of the child, was so strong that The Times published an unusual note of editor after explaining that the child continued to the feeding center after being driven away by Mr. Carter the vulture.
The photo won a Pulitzer in the feature photography category. (Mr. Carter died by suicide a few months later at age 33.)
Ms. Buirski was born Nancy Florence Cohen on June 24, 1945, in Manhattan to Daniel and Helen (Hochstein) Cohen. His father was a paper manufacturer.
After graduating from New Rochelle High School in Westchester County, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Adelphi University in Garden City, NY, in 1967.
He worked as an editor for the Magnum photo agency before joining The Times.
As a photographer he produced a book of 150 images entitled “Earth Angels: Migrant Children in America” (1994), which clearly captured the children of migrant farm workers at work during the day and attending school in night and dramatized the dangers they face from the poor. housing, harsh working conditions and exposure to pesticides.
Her marriages to Peter Buirski and Kenneth Friedlein ended in divorce.
