David France Keynote Speaker

Director of Oscar-nominated documentary, "How to Survive a Plague"
Award-winning journalist
Former Contributing Editor, New York Magazine

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David France's Biography

David France Speaker Profile:Filmmaker David France is the director and co-writer of the Oscar-nominated and critically-acclaimed, How to Survive a Plague, the documentary and subsequent book about the early years of the AIDS epidemic. The film earned him The John Schlesinger Award (given to a first-time documentary or narrative feature filmmaker) from the Provincetown International Film Festival and the PBS Independent Lens broadcast won the Peabody Award and was nominated for two Emmys. David is also a best-selling author and an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in national publications, such as New York magazine, Newsweek, The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and GQ.

He has appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss the scientific basis that homosexuality is genetic. France is also the writer and director of The Life and Death of Marsha P. Johnson (2017). The documentary uses never-before-seen footage and rediscovered interviews in a search for the truth behind the mysterious 1992 death of black transgender activist and Stonewall veteran Marsha P. Johnson. How to Survive a Plague premiered as an official selection at Sundance Film Festival and made many year-end Best Films lists: Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Time, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, and the New York Times.

France was hailed as the best new filmmaker of 2012 by the International Documentary Association, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Boston Film Critics, and Boston Online Film Critics, among others. A mini-series with a screenplay by France is in development.

France’s book on the subject, also called “How to Survive a Plague” was published 2017. It is the first major book to examine the historic role of AIDS activists in the drug breakthroughs that made surviving AIDS possible – and how those efforts also powered a civil rights movement that fundamentally changed the place of gay men and lesbians in America and worldwide. A veteran journalist, France is a contributing editor for New York Magazine and was senior investigative editor at Newsweek until 2003.

He is currently working on Sylvia and Marsha, a documentary about the trans movement. He is also the author of critically-acclaimed, best-selling books. “Our Fathers“, (2004) an investigation into the Catholic Church sexual abuse crisis, was published to critical acclaim and was adapted by Showtime for a film of the same name. The film received Emmy nominations and a Writers Guild of America Award. “The Confession,” which he wrote with the former Governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey, was a New York Times best seller. In addition to Our Fathers, other films have been developed from his work: Thanks of a Grateful Nation, a controversial Showtime miniseries about the first Gulf War; the Peabody Award winner Soldier’s Girl, about a private’s murder.A 2007 article France wrote for GQ, “Dying to Come Out: The War On Gays in Iraq”, won a GLAAD Media Award. He spent a year with the family of a boy who committed suicide and undertook a forensic approach in an article about it for the Ladies’ Home Journal. The piece, entitled “Broken Promises”, which he wrote with Diane Salvatore, won a Mental Health America ‘Excellence in Mental Health Journalism’ award in 2008.

For availability and speaker fees, please contact David France’s speaking agent at Chartwell here, or call +1 972 385 1021 for U.S. inquiries or +44 207 293 0864 for international inquiries.