Zak Piper

Director of Production

Zak is Kartemquin Films' Director of Production and has been on staff at Kartemquin since 2002. Most recently he served as Co-Producer on At the Death House Door. That film premiered at the 2008 SXSW Film Festival and went on to win awards at the Atlanta Film Festival, the Full Frame Documentary Festival, DOC NZ, and Doc Aviv.  It was a finalist for the Human Rights award at IDFA in 2008 and was officially short-listed in the Best Documentary category for the 81st Annual Academy Awards.

Currently, Zak is co-producing The Interrupters with Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz, an ITVS-funded project that will air as part of the Frontline series in 2011.  Zak is also the Associate Producer of Prisoner of Her Past, Kartemquin’s co-production with The Chicago Tribune, that will be released in the spring of 2010.

Zak served as the Location Sound Recordist for At The Death House Door, In the Family, Prisoner of Her Past, and Typeface. Previously, he has acted as sound recordist on a variety of documentaries for the CBC, Channel 4, and PBS.

Zak began at Kartemquin by serving as Post Production Manager and Audio Mixer on the acclaimed PBS documentary mini-series, The New Americans.  He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Columbia College Chicago in 2001 in Film and Video.