Catherine Tambini

Catherine Tambini is an award-winning independent filmmaker. She directed and co-produced Hate Rising with Jorge Ramos, a co-production of HBO and Univision Story House winning the Impact Award for Outstanding Documentary from the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

Tambini was nominated for an Emmy Award for directing and producing The State of Arizona (with Carlos Sandoval), a CINE Golden Eagle winner, an Imagen Award nominee and broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens.

She directed and produced the highly acclaimed Farmingville (with Carlos Sandoval) winning the Sundance Special Jury Award (among many other awards) and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Farmingville was the season opener for PBS’s award-winning documentary series POV.

Tambini co-produced with Anne Belle the Academy Award®-nominated Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse about George Balanchine’s iconic ballerina. It premiered at the New York Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS’s Great Performances/Dance in America.

She produced and directed Art and Heart: The World of Isaiah Sheffer that premiered at Lincoln Center at the New York Jewish Film Festival.

Most recently, she directed and produced Perfectly Normal for Me about four kids in a dance program who want to change the conversation on disabilities. Its national broadcast premiere was on PBS’s America ReFramed after screening at film festivals across the country and Canada, including Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera and the ReelAbilities Film Festivals in New York.

In addition to her documentary work, Tambini has assisted in the production design of many well-known Hollywood films including The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Steel Magnolias, True Colors, and The Secret of My Success. She field-produced and shot portions of the reality series MTV’s I’m From Rolling Stone and TLC’s Pageant Perfect.

Tambini has taught workshops for the Sundance Documentary Fund and the University of Oklahoma. She has been a juror for Miami International Film Festival, Boston Independent Film Festival, BendFilm Festival. She was a guest programmer for several years for the Brooklyn Film Festival and has been a panelist at many film festivals speaking about a range of topics related to filmmaking.

Tambini is the recipient of multiple grants from the Sundance Institute and the MacArthur Foundation among many others. Her work has also been supported by ITVS, Latino Public Broadcasting, and BritDoc’s GoodPitch. She holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a BFA from the University of Oklahoma. She is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Kanbar Institute for Undergraduate Film and Television at Tisch School of the Arts where she is teaching filmmaking to a new generation of filmmakers.