Andrea Nevins, a documentary filmmaker who introduced sensitivity and depth to seemingly lighthearted tales about underdogs and unlikely heroes, together with punk-rock dads and Barbie dolls, died on April 12 at her house in Los Angeles. She was 63.
Her daughter, Clara, mentioned the trigger was breast most cancers.
Ms. Nevins obtained an Academy Award nomination in 1998 for her first impartial venture as a producer, the quick movie “Nonetheless Kicking: The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies,” a few cabaret group made up of retirees within the Southern California desert metropolis.
The movie bears all of the hallmarks of her later work: offbeat characters in unconventional circumstances who, by way of their struggles, say one thing significant about life and the way to dwell it.
Her first full-length venture, “The Different F Phrase” (2011), was primarily based on the 2007 memoir “Punk Rock Dad: No Guidelines, Simply Actual Life,” by Jim Lindberg, the lead singer of the band Pennywise.
In some methods the other of the performers in Palm Springs, Mr. Lindberg was identified for his aggressive stage presence and profane lyrics, whilst he navigated the on a regular basis challenges of elevating three daughters.
Working with a lean movie crew, Ms. Nevins was in a position to get deep into the lives of Mr. Lindberg and different punk dads, producing a touching portrait that went far past its fish-out-of-water premise.
“What I found was that numerous these guys have been actually devastated by their very own fathers,” she instructed NPR in 2011. “And when handed a baby, all of the sudden that each one got here speeding to the forefront, they usually felt like they needed to really be there in a method that their mother and father weren’t.”
The movie was collectively acquired by Showtime Networks and Oscilloscope Laboratories, an organization based by Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys.
“Once I first heard about this movie about musician fathers, I believed, ‘Oh no, not one other movie that everybody thinks I’m going to love,’” Mr. Yauch mentioned in an announcement on the time. “However I used to be really very moved by it, pleasantly shocked, and glad I didn’t go along with my first intuition. It’s a ravishing and touching movie.”
Ms. Nevins was additionally identified for her 2018 documentary “Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie,” a looking out research of the well-known doll that offered supply materials for Greta Gerwig as she and Noah Baumbach wrote the script for the 2023 movie “Barbie.”
The germ of the venture got here from an offhand comment by a pal who labored at Mattel, which makes Barbie: Inside the corporate, she instructed Ms. Nevins, there was an ongoing dialog in regards to the doll’s place within the tradition — and the way to regulate her picture because the tradition modified.
Ms. Nevins and her group spent seven months persuading Mattel to allow them to movie inside its workplaces. The documentary was primarily shot in 2016, at a time when many individuals thought America was about to elect its first feminine president; it was launched in 2018, because the nation grappled with #MeToo scandals.
“I knew, it doesn’t matter what, Barbie was going to be an fascinating method to have a look at the place we at the moment are,” Ms. Nevins instructed The Los Angeles Occasions in 2018. “I’d seen the progress that allowed my mother to have a full-time profession, but additionally the pictures in society that have been setting us again as girls. I might see these waves, and that Barbie had been using each one in all them.”
Andrea Blaugrund was born on March 15, 1962, in Manhattan. Her father, Stanley Blaugrund, was an otolaryngologist, and her mom, Annette (Weintraub) Blaugrund, was a museum curator.
After graduating from Harvard with a level in social research in 1984, she labored as a newspaper reporter in North Carolina and Florida, after which as a producer for “All Issues Thought of,” the NPR program, in Washington.
She additionally labored for the ABC Information documentary collection “Peter Jennings Reporting,” and was a part of the group that gained an Emmy in 1991 for a narrative on gun management.
In 1996, she married David Nevins, who went on to grow to be the chairman and chief government of Showtime. Together with their daughter, he survives her, as do their sons, Charlie and Jesse; her brothers, James and Jonathan; and her mom.
Ms. Nevins made a number of different movies, bringing her trademark sensitivity to stunning characters at vital life moments.
Each the 2015 function “Play It Ahead” and “Happiness,” a 2014 episode of the sports activities collection “State of Play,” checked out skilled athletes considering the way to transfer on from their sports activities careers.
“Hysterical,” which debuted on the 2021 SXSW Movie Competition, tracked the tales of a number of feminine comics in an exploration of the function of gender in standup comedy.
And her most up-to-date movie, “The Cowboy and the Queen” (2023), examined the unlikely friendship that blossomed between a Texas cowboy and Queen Elizabeth II after she realized of his unconventional method to rearing horses.
“I cherished capturing tales visually,” she instructed the web site Girls and Hollywood in 2021. “In faculty, I noticed Barbara Kopple’s ‘Harlan County U.S.A.,’ and I knew that’s what I wished to do — inform tales on movie that transfer folks, perhaps inspire them, perhaps reveal a world they may not in any other case have the chance to expertise.”
