Writer and Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker

Julie Winokur is a freelance writer and documentary filmmaker who has devoted her career to giving voice to people and communities whose experiences barely register in the national dialogue. Most recent project is Denied: The Crisis of America’s Uninsured, which examines the plight of 45 million uninsured Americans. The book for Denied was published in 2003 and has been widely distributed to policy makers and health care advocates. Stories from the book appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle and The New Physician magazine. The work has also appeared as an exhibition that has toured to Union Station (Washington, DC), the Empire State Building and state capitol buildings across the country. Winokur is currently producing a film for Denied.

Winokur also produced and directed the documentary Collateral Damage:  Bad Medicine in Tennessee (24 minutes).  In 2005, when Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee announced he would reform his state’s Medicaid program, people took him at this word.  Little did they know that Bredesen’s idea of reform meant cutting 170,000 people off the program almost overnight. The size and speed of the cuts were unprecedented; the suffering they caused was immeasurable.  The sickest, neediest people were denied medical care while the nation sat by and watched, and the Governor boasted to other heads of states about his success reigning in the rising cost of health care.  This intense, moving film exposes the injustice that occurred in Tennessee and its implications for Medicaid cuts nationwide.  In the richest nation in the world, where people die every day because they lack access to health care, the disparities revealed in this film are chilling. Visit www.talkingeyesmedia.com for information on screenings of Collateral Damage and additional information on Winokur’s various projects.

Winokur’s earlier project was Aging in America: The Years Ahead, which she created with her husband, photojournalist Ed Kashi. Their book, website and documentary film for Aging in America have won awards from the National Press Club, the National Press Photographers Association, and the American Society on Aging, among others. Individual stories from this project have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Their film received two Freddie Awards: The International Health and Medical Media Awards (November, 2005) winning in the Geriatrics category and receiving the special recognition of the Weiss Award for Cinematography. Winokur has been a featured speaker at numerous professional gatherings including lectures at the American Society on Aging, Stanford University and UC Berkeley. The film for “Aging in America” has been broadcast on more than 60 PBS stations nationwide and it won Best Educational Film from the Silver Images Film Festival.

Winokur has been a freelance writer and editor for the past 15 years. Winokur’s stories have focused attention on such subjects as the Indo-American community’s attempts to assimilate and the feminist perspective of Muslim women. As the editorial real estate for such serious subject matter shrinks, Winokur has directed her attention to the “dumbing-down” of the press. Her efforts culminated in the book We the Media: A Citizen’s Guide to Fighting for Media Democracy (New Press, 1997), which she co-edited with Don Hazen, director of the Independent Media Institute. This book serves as a practical guide to understanding the corporate influence over the media. Winokur was also managing editor on the book Inside the LA Riots (IAJ), that examined the roots of racial tension in Los Angeles, and she has consulted on various book projects for Chronicle Books and Herter Studio.

Winokur’s work on We the Media led to her involvement in the second annual Media & Democracy Congress in 1997, a gathering of nearly one thousand media activists sponsored by the Independent Media Institute. At the Congress she presented “Top Dollar v. Bottom Line,” a report that compiled for the first time ever the most egregious examples of synergy in the media. The report helped secure support from such luminaries as Walter Cronkite and media critic Ken Auletta for a Code of Journalistic Integrity.

In 2002, Winokur and Kashi founded Talking Eyes Media, a non-profit multi-media company that uses visually compelling materials to advocate for positive social change. Winokur is Executive director of Talking Eyes Media.