Nancy Porter(II)

Nancy Porter (Producer/Director) has produced and directed numerous documentaries for PBS first as a Producer at WGBH-TV Boston, and since 1992 as the owner of her own production company.

Porter is known for her three-dimensional humanist documentary portraits. The hallmark of her documentary style is the creative use of dramatic storytelling as a production technique. Her dramatic experience is also evident in the carefully reconstructed historical scenes used in her documentary work.

She has long experience making films about women and about literary figures. She was Executive Producer of Something Personal, a PBS series of films by and about women, and produced documentary portraits of American writers John Irving and E.L. Doctorow.

Nancy has won numerous awards including a National Emmy, an American Film Festival Blue Ribbon and three Cine Gold Eagle Awards. Porter was the first recipient of the Women in Film and Video New England Image Award for Vision and Excellence. In 2004, her film about Typhoid Mary, The Most Dangerous Woman in America, was one of the top rated programs on NOVA, and in 2005 was nominated for an Emmy Award as Best Historical Documentary.

Other Porter films for NOVA, the Peabody award-winning PBS science series, are High Tech Babies, Can You Still Get Polio?, Will Venice Survive its Rescue?, and Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Porter's biographies for the PBS history series American Experience are Amelia Earhart, The Wright Stuff, Adm. Richard Byrd: Alone on the Ice, and Houdini.

As Co-Producer/Director, Porter's documentary, Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, was broadcast on American Masters in 2009. The film has won numerous awards including Booklist's Video of the Year and one of American Library Association's 15 Notable Videos of 2010-2011. Porter also produced and directed Getting Better, a documentary for the New England Journal of Medicine's 200th anniversary.