Thom Powers was born in Detroit. Instead of going to college, he worked
for the comic book publisher Fantagraphics Books in Los Angeles and
Seattle. After seven years in the print world, he turned to documentary
film. For the past fourteen years, he has lived in New York City, where
he hosts Stranger than Fiction, a documentary screening series at the
IFC Center. He has directed documentaries for HBO, PBS, Sundance
Channel and other outlets. Since 2000, he has taught a class on
documentary development at New York University, and he is currently
writing a book about the rise of American documentary in the sixties
and seventies for Faber & Faber. He serves as co-chair of the
Cinema Eye Honors, inaugurated this past year, recognizing excellence
in non-fiction film. In the last year, his travel included serving on
juries for CPH:DOX in Denmark and Doc Aviv in Israel. He has programmed
for TIFF since 2006.