Peter Yost
Introduction (2-3 lines)
Peter Yost has produced or executive produced dozens of long-form projects for clients including National Geographic Television, NBC News, CBS News, Bravo, PBS, Discovery-Times and others, and won festival awards and foundation grants for his independent work. His documentaries have been distributed around the world through Discovery Communications, England's Channel Four, PBS, and many other outlets. Over the years, he has conducted extensive interviews with a wide range of exceptional individuals from the Dalai Lama to Robert Redford, and made films in places from India to Togo, and everywhere in between.
Yost is known for producing innovative independent and commissioned films that intelligently explore an eclectic range of subjects and ideas. Samples include: tribal traditions in Africa (National Geographic Television); the impact of public relations on the media (NBC News); the lives of Mississippi River ship pilots (CBS News); anacondas and environmental conservation issues in South America (National Geographic Television); an investigation into the "greening" of Big Oil companies (New York Times and Discovery); a local television news station's struggle for substance in a sensationalistic news market (Discovery); the creative processes of some of the world's most prominent artists (Bravo); traditional medicine in India (The National Institutes of Health); the dying tradition of cockfighting in rural America (Independent); and the plight of Tibetan refugee children in Northern India (PBS/Independent). Peter Yost was born in Japan, grew up in the United States, graduated from Swarthmore College in 1992 with a major in Political Science, and attended the Goethe Institute in Berlin just after the fall of the wall. Before becoming a filmmaker, he founded and directed a series of educational reform programs for middle-school children in the Roxbury section of Boston. The New Day film, Seeds of Tibet: Voice of Children in Exile, brings together his work with inner-city education reform and his interests in politics and Asia. Peter can be reached at his New York-based production company, Pangloss Films. Peter Yost's partner onSeeds of Tibet, Toby Beach, spent part of his childhood in India and was a Fulbright Scholar there in 1993. He has known the Tibetan community in the Indian town of Mussoorie where the film was shot for many years.