Ira Deutchman

Deutchman was born in Cherry Point, NC, on a military base, where his father was serving in the Marines. The family then moved to the Bronx. He spent his formative years on the south side of Chicago, graduating from the Myra Bradwell School in 1967. In his early teen years, his family moved briefly to Highland Park, a northern suburb of Chicago, before moving to New Jersey, where he graduated from Paramus High School. He returned to the Chicago area to attend Northwestern University, graduating in 1975 with a BS in speech, with a major in radio, TV, Film.

Academic career

Deutchman began teaching at Columbia University in 1987 as an adjunct professor in the MFA Film Program of the School of the Arts. His first course in Marketing and Distribution of Feature Films has been taught continuously since, and is now called The Business of Motion Pictures. He became a full-time associate professor in 2000, and was promoted to full Professor in 2009. He was named Chair of the Film Program in July 2011 and served until 2015.

While still in college at Northwestern University, Deutchman organized and marketed the Midwest premiere of John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence. Shortly after graduation in 1975, Deutchman began his professional career, working under Don Rugoff at Cinema 5 Ltd., where he began in non-theatrical sales, moving into advertising before being named Director of Acquisitions. While there, he worked on the marketing of a number of high-profile art films such as "Scenes from a Marriage", "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", "Swept Away", "Harlan County USA" and "Pumping Iron".

Deutchman was one of the original founding team of United Artists Classics, where he worked as Director of Advertising and Publicity on such films as "Lili Marleen" (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), "Diva" (Jean-Jacques Beineix), "The Last Metro" (François Truffaut), "Lola" (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), and "Cutter's Way" (Ivan Passer), as well as the re-release of "New York, New York" (Martin Scorsese) and "The Last Waltz" (Martin Scorsese). From United Artists Classics, he moved on to become one of the founding partners for a number of distribution companies that made an impact on the independent film business, including Cinecom Pictures (originally called Cinecom International Films); Fine Line Features; and Redeemable Features.

At Cinecom Pictures (1982–1988), where Deutchman was co-founder and president, Deutchman released films including "A Room With a View," "Swimming to Cambodia", "El Norte", "The Brother from Another Planet" and "Stop Making Sense". After Cinecom, Deutchman formed Deutchman Company Inc. to act as a producers' rep and marketing consultant. The company worked on "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" (winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival), "Metropolitan" and "To Sleep with Anger" among others.

While working as a consultant on Whit Stillman's "Metropolitan" for New Line Cinema, Deutchman was recruited to create a new specialized division of the company, which became Fine Line Features. Fine Line had an extraordinary five-year run from 1990 to 1995 under founder and president Ira Deutchman, distributing such critically acclaimed films as "Hoop Dreams", "The Player", "Short Cuts", "Night on Earth", "My Own Private Idaho", and "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle".

Deutchman left Fine Line in 1995, to co-found independent film production company, Redeemable Features, with partners Peter Newman and Greg Johnson. Films included Tony Vitale's "Kiss Me, Guido", Sarah Kernochan's "All I Wanna Do", Adam Davidson's "Way Past Cool", and Tanya Wexler's "Ball in the House".

Deutchman is married and has two children. His son, Jeff Deutchman, is also in the film business; in 2013, after seven years at IFC Films, he moved to Paramount Pictures as Director of Acquisitions (Home Entertainment Division) and then in 2014 to Alchemy, where he served as VP of Acquisitions until 2016.; he is currently Senior Vice President of Acquisitions and Production for Neon; he is also the director/editor/producer of the documentary film "11-4-08", about Obama's presidential election. Deutchman's daughter, Emily Deutchman, is an artist and furniture maker, and his wife, Beth Krieger, was communications director at a New York City independent school until 2019.

In 2015, Deutchman donated his extensive personal archives to the University of Michigan, which also includes the archives of Orson Welles, Robert Altman, John Sayles, Alan Rudolph and Nancy Savoca. Deutchman's collection includes over 40 years of documentation and artifacts of the independent film business from his time at Cinema 5 until the present.