Faculty

Tim Kirkman received Emmy, GLAAD, Gotham and Independent Spirit Award nominations for his first film, Dear Jesse, a first-person documentary about the antigay North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. Dear Jesse won the Audience Award at Frameline and was named Best Documentary of the Year by the Boston Society of Film Critics after airing on the HBO/Cinemax Real Life series. Kirkman has written and directed two other feature films: Loggerheads, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest; and Lazy Eye, which had a limited theatrical run and after an 18-month window on Netflix, is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

He is the co-founder, with Todd Shotz, of T42 Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based production company that produced Lazy Eye. Most recently they produced Joanna Gleason's directorial debut, Morning Into Night, a short film that she also wrote.

Kirkman directed the feature film adaptation of David Drake’s solo show The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me and 2nd Serve, a comedy written by James Markert.

Kirkman has taught screenwriting at UCLA TFT since 2018. He is also on the directing faculty of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and has taught at Hunter College in New York City and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A Writers Guild of America member since 2006, he lives in Los Angeles.