Mark Lipman has worked as a documentary filmmaker for thirty years, exploring a wide range of subjects from domestic violence to human sexuality to affordable housing and community organizing. His films have been broadcast nationally on public television and won numerous awards. His producing credits include To Have and To Hold (1981), the first documentary to look at domestic violence through the experiences of men; Holding Ground: The Rebirth of Dudley Street (1996), a film about the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative’s successful efforts to revitalize a Boston neighborhood devastated by redlining, arson and illegal dumping; Father’s Day (2003), an experimental documentary about the death of Mark’s father; Gaining Ground (2012), a sequel to Holding Ground that explores DSNI’s success in preventing foreclosures and fostering youth leadership; and Streets of Dreams: Development Without Displacement in Communities of Color (2013).

Mark has produced media for non-profit organizations throughout New England including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where he documented the creation of new artwork by internationally renowned artists-in-residence. As a freelance editor, he has worked for the NOVA series at WGBH/Boston and for many other Boston-area companies. He has taught editing and production classes to young people and adults in Massachusetts, Maine, Indiana and California. After moving to San Francisco in 2004 and forming Open Studio Productions with Helen, Mark edited Alaska Far Away, a feature documentary about a controversial New Deal program that relocated 200 destitute farm families into the wilds of Alaska.

Mark also has extensive experience designing and implementing audience engagement campaigns for his films. The Ford Foundation included Holding Ground as one of ten case studies in an evaluation of its most successful media grants over the prior twenty years. Since 1981 he has been an active member of New Day Films, a national cooperative of social issue filmmakers who collaborate in the distribution of their films, serving several times as its chief financial officer and as a member of its steering committee.

Mark has an MFA in filmmaking from the Massachusetts College of Art and a BA in psychology from Harvard University.