The District of Columbia Office of Motion Picture and Television Development (MPTD) is pleased to recognize veteran, award-winning documentarian Judith Dwan Hallet (Judy Hallet), as the March Filmmaker of the Month. In honor of Women’s History Month, MPTD applauds Judy for her lifelong contribution to the local film industry.
Over her career that spans more than four decades, Judy has produced films in 17 countries around the world on subjects as diverse as an obscure tribe living in tree houses in the rainforest of Irian Jaya, Indonesia, to gauchos in Argentina, to biographies on Jane Goodall and Pope John Paul II.
After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1964, Judy joined the Peace Corps where she made a film with her then future husband, Stanley Hallet on the Berber Villages of Southern Tunisia. After directing several more independent films with her architect/filmmaker husband, including two documentaries in Afghanistan, Judy became a Producer/Reporter at the NBC affiliate station in Salt Lake City. Over the next 14 years, she produced nearly 100 news documentaries.
Judy moved to the District in 1987 to work for National Geographic Television as the Senior Producer for the weekly television series, Explorer. After nearly five years at National Geographic Television, overseeing more than 60 documentaries and producing four of her own, Judy formed her own company, Judith Dwan Hallet Productions, LLC, where she produced and directed 14 award-winning television documentaries.
In 1995, Women in Film & Video awarded Judy the Woman of Vision Creative Excellence Award. In 2001 she received The Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline by the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In 2008 she received an Emmy from The National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in recognition for her significant contributions to the broadcast industry.
This year, Judy and her husband Stanley produced the documentary Tale of the Tongs, which follows the story of Catholic University architecture professor Travis Price and his students building an architectural memorial on the island of Inishturk, Ireland over nine days in 2013. The film interweaves the process of construction with profiles of people who live on the island, their culture and landscape. The film screened recently at the Woman’s National Democratic Club.
Judy is currently completing a book on her life as a woman documentary filmmaker. A memoir focusing on her experiences out in the field in Africa, South America, Indonesia, Europe and Afghanistan. She and her husband Stanley reside in Ward 3 of the District of Columbia.
MPTD launched the Filmmaker of the Month initiative to feature a District-based filmmaker who exemplifies the vast amount of talent and creativity based here in the nation’s capital. The Filmmaker of the Month initiative is part of MPTD’s mission to elevate the national and international profile of the city’s most talented filmmakers. Previous filmmakers honored include award-winning director of photography Neil Barrett, multimedia storyteller Saaret Yoseph, Money Matters director Ryan Richmond, and documentary filmmaker Ellie Walton.
You can visit the Filmmaker of the Month section to learn more about Judy and previous Filmmaker of the Month recipients.