Biography

Sam Kauffmann is Professor Emeritus of Film and Television at Boston University, where he taught production and motion picture editing.

He also served on the faculty of BU's Kilachand Honors College, where he created a seminar entitled "The Camera as an Agent for Social Change." He was recently named a Guggenheim Fellow in Creative Arts--Film. In 2006, he was a Senior Fulbright Specialist in Rwanda, teaching video production at the National University of Rwanda. In 2004, he was a Fulbright Scholar, teaching at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Author of one of the most popular editing guidebooks in the world, Avid Editing: A Guide for Beginning and Intermediate Users, from Focal Press, he has directed scores of documentary and narrative films. He has many credits as a cinematographer as well. His work has been screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and aired on network television, PBS, and local stations throughout America.

Perhaps his two most impactful films are Living with Slim: Kids Talk About HIV/AIDS and Show Your Love. In the 28-minute film, Living with Slim: Kids Talk About HIV/AIDS, seven African children who are HIV positive through mother-to-child transmission, talk about their lives—the stigma, loneliness and emotional trauma they go through every day. The film has been used by WHO, UNESCO, and shown in hospitals, health clinics and medical training programs throughout the world. (Slim is slang that many Africans use to describe AIDS, as so many people seemed to waste away and become emaciated from the disease.)

In the 20-minute film, Show Your Love, seven children talk about their relationship (or lack of relationship) with their fathers. Screened at The White House, it is used by fatherhood organization, divorce courts, the armed services and prison in an attempt to show fathers how important they are to their children.

Massacre at Murambi is perhaps his most watched film as it aired on PBS, won top prize at festivals all over the world and has been viewed on YouTube well over a million times. He filmed it when he was living in Rwanda. As one reviewer wrote, “It will make you shiver and leave you speechless.”