Ira Deutchman is a producer, distributor and marketer of independent films. In 2000, he moved into film exhibition as co-founder and managing partner of Emerging Pictures, a New York-based digital exhibition company, which was sold in January 2015 to Vancouver-based 20 Year Media. He also served as Chair of the Film Program at Columbia University School of the Arts from 2011 to 2015, where he has been a Professor since 1987. Deutchman is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He was one of the original creative advisors to the Sundance Institute and formerly served on the board of advisors for the Sundance Film Festival. He has also served as a board member and former board chair for the Independent Feature Project, the board of advisors for the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, the Williamstown Film Festival, IFP/West, and the Collective for Living Cinema, and was a member of the board for Kartemquin Films. Deutchman continues to produce films, consults on the marketing and distribution of independent films and teaches producing students in the MFA Film Program at Columbia University's School of the Arts. Current projects include a film adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich's best-selling book "Nickel and Dimed," a theatrical adaptation of Joan Micklin Silver's 1976 independent film "Hester Street" and a documentary about art film maverick Donald Rugoff, which premiered at the 2019 DOC NYC Festival in New York. He consults for Cinecitta on the marketing of Italian cinema in the United States. Deutchman was awarded the first annual Spotlight Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2017 Sundance Art House Convergence. Early life and education Deutchman was born in Cherry Point, NC, on a military base, where his father was serving in the Marines. The family then moved to the Bronx. He spent his formative years on the south side of Chicago, graduating from the Myra Bradwell School in 1967. In his early teen years, his family moved briefly to Highland Park, a northern suburb of Chicago, before moving to New Jersey, where he graduated from Paramus High School. He returned to the Chicago area to attend Northwestern University, graduating in 1975 with a BS in Speech, with a major in Radio, TV, Film. Early career While still in college at Northwestern University, Deutchman organized and marketed the Midwest premiere of John Cassavetes' "A Woman Under the Influence." Shortly after graduation in 1975, Deutchman began his