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Eric Saltzman
A 1972 graduate of Harvard Law School, Eric F. Saltzman began his career as a criminal defense attorney in Seattle’s and Boston’s public defender offices. While teaching in Harvard Law School’s Criminal Trial Advocacy program, Saltzman took up filmmaking at MIT’s renowned Film Section and re-created trials as teaching tools. Moving from re-creation to verite, Saltzman introduced cameras into actual courtrooms with The Shooting of Big Man: Anatomy of a Criminal Case (a two hour special on ABC News in 1979, now available for Creative Commons license here). For CBS News, he produced and directed Miami: The Trial That Sparked the Riots, an investigation of a police homicide, its cover-up, and the ultimate trial of the police officers. These and other films have won Emmy and ABA Silver Gavel awards, among others. In the mid-1980s, Saltzman moved into the film business and began acquiring and licensing libraries of classic motion picture and television rights for emerging media such as cable, microwave and satellite transmission. In 2000-2002, Saltzman was executive director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He is a member of the bars of Washington State and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and on the boards of not-for-profits in the area of race and poverty and the extension of Internet services to the human rights and legal services sectors. He lives with his wife and two boys in Cambridge, Massachusetts.