Jim LeBrecht
Filmmaker, Activist & Podcast Host
Jim LeBrecht is an award-winning filmmaker, sound designer, author and disability rights activist with close to 50 years of experience in film and theater. He co-directed and co-produced Crip Camp with Nicole Newnham. A
Netflix Original Documentary, the film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for documentary. It went on to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature, an
Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary and a Peabody Award.
Jim also directed Change, Not Charity: The Americans with Disabilities Act for PBS’s American Experience. The documentary chronicles the decades-long struggle for disability rights and the bipartisan support that led to the passage of this landmark legislation in 1990.
As an executive producer, Jim supports films that center disabled people and expand disability representation on screen. His executive producing credits include the Emmy Award-winning documentaries The Ride Ahead, Patrice: The Movie and My Disability Roadmap. He is also an executive producer of the Apple Original Being Heumann, an adaptation of disability rights leader Judy Heumann’s memoir and his first executive producing role on a narrative feature film.
Jim began his career in 1978 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where he served as resident sound designer for 10 years. His theater work also took him to the New York Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse and ACT in San Francisco. In 1989, he joined the legendary Saul Zaentz Film Center, working his way from apprentice to sound designer, mixer and sound supervisor.
In 1996, Jim founded Berkeley Sound Artists, an audio postproduction house that became a home for documentary and independent filmmakers. His more than 180 film credits include Minding the Gap, The Island President, The Waiting Room, Audrie and Daisy, Deaf President Now and, of course, Crip Camp. He also co-authored Sound and Music for the Theatre: The Art and Technique of Design, now in its fifth edition and used as
a textbook around the world.
Jim hosts The Art of Documentary, a podcast by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The series features in-depth conversations with influential documentary filmmakers about their creative processes,
personal journeys and the stories behind their films.
Jim credits meeting Judy Heumann, considered the mother of the disability rights movement, at Camp Jened in 1971 with setting him on the path to becoming a disability rights activist. His activism began in high school and
continued at UC San Diego, where he helped found the Disabled Students Union. He is a former board member of the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund.
He is a co-founder of FWD-Doc, an international membership organization supporting documentary filmmakers with disabilities, and the 1IN4 Coalition, a coalition of disabled creatives working to increase employment, accessibility and authentic disability representation in Hollywood, both on screen and behind the camera. He has also served as a character consultant on two Pixar films.
Jim is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Television Academy. He is a Disability Futures Fellow, an initiative of the Ford Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and a 2020 BAFTA Breakthrough USA honoree.