Remembering Documentary Director Bruce Sinofsky (Video)

According to Sinofsky’s wife Florence, the director, age 58, died from complications of diabetes.

A Boston native and graduate of Tisch, Sinofsky and co-director Joe Berling were Oscar-nominated in 2012 for “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” the third installment in a series of sprawling crime docs that examined the child murders committed by the West Memphis Three.

The first film, 1996’s “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills,” won Sinofsky an Emmy, which he shared with his tight-knit crew-members Sheila Nevins (executive producer), Berlinger (producer/director) and Jonathan Moss (coordinating producer). The film also won them a Peabody Award.

“Without trivializing the killings they came to investigate, the filmmakers carefully study the tattered social fabric that is the backdrop for an unthinkable crime,” wrote NYT’s Janet Maslin back in 1996. “In this sad, lurid and darkly transfixing story, they locate all the elements of true-crime reporting at its most bitterly revealing.”

Sinofsky also garnered raves for his 2004 Metallica doc “Some Kind of Monster,” a heretofore unseen depiction of these musicians at their darkest hours. The film won Sinofsky and Berlinger an Independent Spirit Award.

New York Times’ obit is here. Watch a video tribute courtesy of American Masters below.