15 Facts About Mel Lawrence

Mel Lawrence was an American film director and producer and former concert and festival promoter.

Mel Lawrence is best known for his role as the Director of Operations at the Woodstock Festival, his work on the Qatsi Trilogy, and for directing and producing the Emmy-nominated documentary Paha Sapa: The Struggle for the Black Hills.

Mel Lawrence was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.

In 1967, Mel Lawrence became the Promotions director of KFRC, in San Francisco, CA, where he co-created and co-produced The Magic Mountain Music Festival and helped facilitate the Monterey Pop Festival after the success of Magic Mountain Music Festival.

In 1970 Mel Lawrence moved to New Mexico, where he became the Director of Development for the Wheelwright Museum of the Indian American, a museum dedicated to Native American art.

Mel Lawrence continued to produce music festivals, including Jamboree in the Hills, a country music festival in Wheeling, West Virginia, that became an annual festival that is still held today.

In 1989, Mel Lawrence worked in Brazil as a line producer for Ile Aiye, a PBS documentary about the Candomble religion of Brazil's West African Yoruba immigrants directed by David Byrne of Talking Heads and scouted locations in Brazil for the TBS documentary Without Borders, which focused on the future of the Amazon.

Mel Lawrence was a partner at Deep River Productions, and the company's vice president.

Mel Lawrence executive produced Soul in the Hole, a documentary about Brooklyn street basketball that was released theatrically and won the Independent Spirit: Truer Than Fiction Award.

The film was nominated for an Emmy and Mel Lawrence won Best Director by the American Indian Film Festival as well as a number of other awards in 1994.

In 1997 Mel Lawrence became Program Director for The Recovery Network, a start-up cable network designed specifically for addicts and their families and support community.

Mel Lawrence reprogrammed and produced over 100 hours of content for the network which was seen in over 15 million households in the US.

In 1999, Mel Lawrence directed special events for Woodstock '99, the music festival commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the original Woodstock Festival.

When Mel Lawrence died he was working on a number of documentaries, including a film about tequila, a work chronicling the stories of multiple generations of a Chinese-American family known as Bamboo Roots, and an update on the conflicts covered in his film Paha Sapa.

Mel Lawrence is survived by his partner, the artist Nani Grenell and his beloved nephew Seth Lachs.