pamela tanner boll
Pamela Tanner Boll began her life in Midland, Texas, and was raised in Parkersburg, West Virginia, with her younger brother and two sisters. A poet and artist, Pamela graduated from Middlebury College with a degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa, and soon afterwards began her adult career.
Beginning in the late seventies, she first worked as a publishing assistant at Curtis Brown, followed by a job at a commodity trading company. The birth of Pamela’s son propelled her back to writing as a way to explore the unexpectedly complicated emotions of motherhood. The strength of Pamela’s writing prompted Harvard to offer her a position as a teaching fellow; she taught at Harvard for three terms alongside Dr. Robert Coles.
In 2004, Pamela merged her artistic creativity with her social activism by co-executive producing the Academy Award-winning documentary, “Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids,” a portrait of the children of prostitutes in Sonagachi, the red light district of Calcutta, India. This critically acclaimed film garnered the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for a Documentary and the 2005 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, among an array of other accolades.
Pamela has recently completed directing and producing a new film which was released in the fall of 2008, entitled, “Who Does She Think She Is?”—a feature-length documentary about the lives of women who are artists and mothers. The film follows five contemporary female artists—sculptors, musicians, and painters—and chronicles their struggles to express themselves in a world that often devalues the contributions of women as artists and caregivers.
Pamela is currently producing the following film projects: “Global Moms” with director Justine Shapiro (of “Promises”); “Life on the Edge: True Stories of Doctors Without Borders,” a documentary following volunteers from Doctors Without Borders; “Project Kashmir” directed by Senain Kheshgi and Geeta Patel; “In a Dream” (winner of the Emerging Visions Audience Award at SXSW) directed by Jeremiah Zagar and Jeremy Yaches; and “Connected: A Declaration of Interdependence” with Tiffany Shlain, director of “The Tribe” and eight award-winning shorts.
Pamela has just completed graduate studies at Lesley University this spring. She holds an MA in interdisciplinary studies with a focus on women and creativity.
Pamela lives in Winchester, Massachusetts, where she and her husband raised three sons.
