Steven Lawrence has been making documentaries and videos about artists, activists, and everyday heroes for 30+ years. In a sometimes parallel TV career, he played a pivotal role in launching three innovative platforms that changed the way Americans see their world.
FILM WORK
As a producer Steven’s work includes 3 feature docs in collaboration with Michael Apted, including THE LONG WAY HOME, about the odyssey of underground Soviet rocker Boris Grebenshikov to the west and back, and MARRIED IN AMERICA, a longitudinal series about diverse American couples who wed in 2001.
Steven also created the International Emmy-award winning longitudinal series BORN IN THE USSR producing the first film, AGE 7 IN THE USSR. Among his many other producing credits are THE FURIOUS FORCE OF RHYMES,about hip-hop as protest music around the world, and SARABAH about Senegalese rapper Sister Fa’s fight to end female genital cutting in her homeland.
His directing credits include TELL TCHAIKOVSKY THE NEWS: ROCK IN RUSSIA for MTV, the groundbreaking interactive VIS à VIS doc series for PBS, and THE CAT RESCUERS (with Rob Fruchtman), about animal rights activists in Brooklyn, which won the 2018 Hamptons International Film Festival’s animal rights award. His most recent film, THE INVISIBLE EXTINCTION (with Sarah Schenck) about scientists racing to save the human microbiome, had its world premiere at CPH:DOX 2022.
In 1988 Steven founded Yerosha Productions to produce THE LONG WAY HOME and the VIS à VIS series. Yerosha has also produced advocacy videos and series for NGOs like Amnesty International USA and the International Development Law Organization.
PUBLIC ACCESS TV
In 1972, just old enough to vote, Steven was hired by Manhattan Cable TV, where he became director of community production services and helped blaze the trail for public access to cable TV, the YouTube of its day. While there he also co-founded Metropolis Video, which produced acclaimed multi-camera recordings of emerging punk & new wave groups at CBGB in 1975, including Talking Heads, Blondie, and Richard Hell and the Heartbreakers.
MTV
MTV hired Steven in 1981 to help launch the channel. He served as its senior producer-director of long form programming through 1987, making the LINER NOTES series, where he showcased diverse artists like RUN-DMC, Fela and Ruben Blades, whose work didn’t fit the channel’s musical format. Steven also produced and directed the ADDICTED TO STYLE series, featuring Frank Zappa and family, and documentary specials on Paul McCartney, Ray Davies, David Bowie, Sting, and the Artists United Against Apartheid project.
After making TELL TCHAIKOVSKY THE NEWS, about brave and brilliant underground Soviet rockers, he was fired for being too independent and socially conscious. A few months later MTV recommended him to produce the video for Bob Dylan’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Show biz!
RUSSIA
Steven’s film work in Russia led to consulting for Internews Network in the 1990s on media democracy projects in the country. Also, for Internews, he produced & co-directed a series of interactive video dialogues between American and Iranian citizens and filmmakers.
LINK TV
In 1999 Steven co-founded Link TV, Television Without Borders, a free satellite TV channel to connect Americans to the rest of the world at a time when US networks were disconnecting them. As Link’s vice president of music and cultural programming he pioneered broadcasting of world music with a regular strand of curated videos, and world cinema, with the CINEMONDO series, which provided US TV premieres for directors like Asghar Farhadi.
For Link he also produced and/or directed several original music and human rights projects, including, THE PRICE OF SILENCE music video, MUSIC FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, NEW MUSIC FROM THE MUSLIM WORLD, and BLUEPRINT FOR ACCOUNTABILITY: WORKING THE DARK SIDE, about the US policy of torture in the "War on Terror,” hosted by Rachel Maddow.
After leaving Link in 2010, Steven resumed making documentaries and advocacy videos. He lives in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, NY with his wife, Helen Garrett.
Contact
steven.t.lawrence@gmail.com