Les Guthman

Director, the Advanced LIGO Documentary Project

Les Guthman is a multiple award-winning documentary director, writer, producer and production executive.  His awards include “Three Nights at the Keck” with Jon Lithgow, which won the National Academy of Sciences nationwide competition to find the best new idea in science television, up against four PBS stations in the final round; and “Farther Than the Eye Can See,” which was nominated for two National Emmys, Outstanding Documentary and Outstanding Cinematography (on Mt Everest). 

He created, directed and executive produced the DISCOVER MAGAZINE science television series at Disney and then Outside Television, the production division of Outside Magazine, which he lead for nine years.  

He is now in the 11th year and 13th production of his LIGO collaboration with Caltech and MIT.  This year his decade-long 4K video archive of LIGO’s Nobel Prize winning astrophysics has become a formal collection in the Caltech Collections and Archives. 

He is a 25-year member of the Explorers Club in New York and a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.  He has been on the jury of the Banff Film Festival and the Taos Adventure Film Festival.

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