Seymour Wishman, who was president of distributor First Run Features for nearly four decades and produced the documentary feature Sex & Justice, has died. He was 79.
First Run confirmed that he died January 29 in Bridgewater, CT.
Wishman started out as a criminal and civil rights attorney in New York and New Jersey and became an assistant in the latter’ Essex County. He went on to serve as a deputy assistant to President Jimmy Carter in the Office of Public Liaison during the 1970s.
In 1984, he became president of First Run Features, an NYC-based indie distributor that has focused on documentaries. The company is the U.S. home of Michael Apted’s Up franchise, starting with 28 Up in 1984 and later including all films in the series. It also release Before Stonewall (1984) and After Stonewall (1999). First Run re-released the former in 2019 to mark the 50th anniversary of the uprising that was a watershed moment for the LGBTQ rights movement.
“I worked alongside Seymour for almost 34 years, and his passing is a great loss to me, and as well as to my colleagues at First Run Features,” company VP Marc Mauceri said in a statement to Deadline. “I learned so much from him not only about film distribution but also about his various and wide-ranging passions — from Shakespeare to horse racing, from politics to the Talmud. And always, most interestingly, what it was to grow up in a Jewish family in Newark in the mid-1900s. The stories he told were insightful, compassionate, clever and usually hilarious. And at the bottom of it all was his unending love for his wife and daughter. He will live forever in all who knew him.”
Wishman’s feature producing credits include First Run’s 1993 documentary Sex & Justice, which chronicles the dramatic confrontation between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings before the Senate in 1991.
Wishman also is the author of the 1981 memoir Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer, nonfiction title Anatomy of a Jury and the novel Question of Consent.
Said Journey Films President Martin Doblmeier in a statement: “Seymour had the mind of a great lawyer, the courage of a successful entrepreneur and the heart of a mensch. More than 25 years ago, he took a chance on me, and it changed my life. I know a lot of filmmakers who can say the same.”
Julia Newman, the filmmaker behind Still a Revolutionary: Albert Einstein, told Deadline in a statement: “”I am among those fortunate filmmakers whose work Seymour championed. I owe so much of their success to his creative spirit.”
Wishman is survived by his wife, Nancy Burr Evans; daughter Samantha; and brother Harvey Wishman.