Grants & Awards

About the Film:

Throughout Richard Nixon’s presidency, three White House aides obsessively documented their experiences with Super 8 home movie cameras. This unique, charming and humorous visual record (created by H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin) was seized by the FBI during the Watergate investigation, then filed away and forgotten for almost 40 years. Our Nixon is a feature length documentary presenting those home movies for the first time, using them to create an intimate and complex portrait of the Nixon presidency as never seen before.

Our Nixon begins in 1969. While many people are dropping out, we meet three squares who have just started new jobs in the White House. Young, idealistic and dedicated, they had no idea that a few years later they’d all be in prison. Their loss of innocence and their betrayal by the President is the story of Our Nixon. Their story sheds new light on larger historical themes at a key moment in American history when the age of Aquarius gave way to the age of Nixon.

About the Filmmakers:

Penny Lane (Co-producer / Co-director) has been making short documentaries and essay films since 2002. Her films have screened at Rotterdam, MOMA, AFI FEST, Rooftop Films, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Impakt, Images and many other venues. She has been awarded production grants from the LEF Foundation, NYSCA, Experimental Television Center, IFP and the Puffin Foundation. Penny has also worked as a film programmer for the Flaherty Seminar and as a professor of film and video at Hampshire College, Williams College and Bard College.

Brian L. Frye (Co-producer / Co-director) is a filmmaker, writer, and professor of law. His films explore relationships between history, society, and cinema through archival and amateur images. Brian’s films have been shown by The Whitney Museum, New York Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, New York Underground Film Festival, The Warhol Museum, Pleasure Dome, Media City and Images Festival, and are in the permanent collection of The Whitney Museum. He has been awarded grants from the Jerome Foundation and the Experimental Television Center.

Dan Cogan (Executive Producer) is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Impact Partners, a fund and advisory service for investors and philanthropists who seek to promote social change through film. Since its inception less than three years ago, IP has been involved in the financing of over 25 films, including: The Cove, which won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; Freeheld, which won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film; and The Garden, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2009.

Jenny Raskin (Executive Producer), head of development at Impact Partners, is a documentary producer, director and writer. Her work has been broadcast on PBS, The National Geographic Channel, The Sundance Channel and The Discovery Channel. Her feature documentary On Hostile Ground was released theatrically to critical acclaim and broadcast on The Sundance Channel. She produced the feature documentary Motherland Afghanistan for PBS/Independent Lens. She has also worked as a story consultant and writer for several documentary films and television series.