Collection context
Summary
- Title:
- Donna Deitch papers
- Dates:
- 1988-2016
- Creators:
- Deitch, Donna, 1945- and Deitch, Donna, 1945-
- Abstract:
- Donna Deitch is a director and producer with more than 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry. This collection contains production materials related to Deitch's work as a film and television director and producer from 1988-2016.
- Extent:
- 6.8 linear feet (16 document boxes and one flat box) and 71 born-digital carriers (71 unprocessed optical discs)
- Language:
- Materials are in English.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Donna Deitch papers (Collection 2452). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The Donna Deitch papers range from 1988-2016 and contain production materials related to Deitch's work as a film and television director and producer.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Donna Deitch (M.F.A. '76), is a director and producer with more than 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry. Her landmark lesbian love story Desert Hearts (1986) was a hit at the Berlin, Sundance, Telluride and Toronto film festivals.
Desert Hearts made an impression on Oprah Winfrey, too, and she subsequently hired Deitch to direct the Emmy-nominated ABC miniseries The Women of Brewster Place. Many other TV directing credits followed, including five network pilots and numerous cable and network films such as HBO's Prison Stories: Women on the Inside; ABC's Sexual Advances; and Showtime's Common Ground and The Devil's Arithmetic, for which Deitch received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing.
She has also directed many hours of series television including numerous episodes of NYPD Blue, ER, Heroes, Law and Order: SVU, Private Practice, Grey's Anatomy, Judging Amy, A Gifted Man and Greenleaf, among others. Her 1998 documentary, Angel on My Shoulder, which chronicled the passing of her best friend, actress Gwen Welles, won the Chicago International Film Festival's Gold Hugo award. Additionally, she shoots footage around the world for Equality Now to document their work against sexual trafficking and FGM, and for full equality of women and girls.
Deitch began her career as a painter and still photographer, winning first place in a Mademoiselle magazine photo contest judged by renowned photographer Diane Arbus. As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, she received her political education on the battlefields of People's Park and Sproul Plaza. She received an M.F.A. in theater arts with a concentration in film from what was formerly known as the UCLA College of Fine Arts in 1976.
She is currently working on a number of feature film projects including Desert Hearts: The Sequel; The Catcher, based on the Peter Wyden book Stella: One Woman's True Tale of Evil, Betrayal and Survival in Hitler's Germany; and an adaptation of Terri Jentz's award-winning true-crime memoir Strange Piece of Paradise. Perhaps most importantly, Deitch is developing a TV series to end all war.
Deitch is a co-founder of SPARC: The Social and Public Art Resource Center (for which she directed the documentary The Great Wall of Los Angeles, about the painting of the longest mural in the world and SPARC's community work); a Women's Media Center board member; and a Donor Direct Action steering committee member. She originated and is the trustee of the first full-ride scholarship for a graduate directing student at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
She is a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Directors Guild of Canada and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Biography source: https://www.tft.ucla.edu/executive-board/donna-deitch/
- Acquisition information:
- Gift of Donna Deitch, 2024.
- Processing information:
-
Processed by Kelly Besser, 2025.
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Problematic Content and Description in UCLA's library collections and archives.
- Arrangement:
-
This collection's arrangement maintains its existing order.
- Physical / technical requirements:
-
COLLECTION CONTAINS UNPROCESSED AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS: Audiovisual materials are not currently available for access and will require further processing and assessment. If you have questions about this material please email AskLSC@library.ucla.edu.
- Physical location:
- Held at UCLA Library Special Collections. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Indexed terms
About this collection guide
- Date Encoded:
- This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2026-03-23 13:46:27 -0700 .
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Terms of access:
-
Property rights to the physical objects belong to the UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Donna Deitch papers (Collection 2452). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Location of this collection:
-
A1713 Charles E. Young Research LibraryBox 951575Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
- Contact:
- (310) 825-4988