David Richard Koff (September 24, 1939 – March 6, 2014) was an American maker of documentary films, social activist, writer, researcher, and editor.
His interest in social and economic justice has shaped a career largely spent exploring human rights, colonialism, resistance movements, racism, labor unions, and the oppression and exploitation of undocumented workers in America.
However, he veered from political concerns long enough to write and co-produce the film People of the Wind, for which, in 1976, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.
After graduating from Stanford University with an honors degree in political science in 1961, Koff traveled to West Africa, teaching in Sierra Leone and participating in a voluntary work-camp project in Ghana.
In addition to many short projects, he produced and directed (with partner Anthony Howarth) and wrote The Black Man's Land Trilogy, released in 1972–73, narrated by Tanzanian broadcaster Msindo Mwinyipembe and with music by Peter Frampton.
In particular, material from the Trilogy was included in Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, a 2007 film about the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Kenyan environmental activist, made by Lisa Merton and Alan Dater|[2] In 1976, Koff joined again with Howarth to make a documentary of a different kind, People of the Wind.
[13] After returning to the U.S. in the 1980s, Koff worked as a strategic research analyst, filmmaker, and tactician with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, HERE, a position that included speech writing, the creation of many short in-house strategic organizing videos, and developing film archives of various actions (such as the 2005 "Banquet in the Streets",[14] demonstrations, and campaigns, the largest of which was the 2003 Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.
In 2006 Koff returned full-time to documentary filmmaking and, with independent producer and director Lyn Goldfarb, formed Organizing Video Productions OVP).
[20] OVP works primarily with unions to make short films that organizers and rank and file leaders can use as tools to build their movement.