Charles Ferguson

Charles Ferguson is an award-winning documentarian whose films have confronted some of the most contentious political and economic problems that contemporary American society has dealt with. After earning a Ph.D in political science at M.I.T. in the late 1980s, he was an independent consultant to many high tech firms. He was also a software entrepreneur, an author whose books have studied how technology affects our daily lives, and a philanthropist. His first documentary, "No End in Sight," was a critical look at how the Bush administration made severe mistakes in the first two years of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and how those mistakes led to greater anarchy, violence, and terrorism within the country. The backbone of Ferguson's research is the more than 30 on-screen interviews conducted with people who were part of the Bush administration at the time of the occupation, U.S. soldiers who were in Iraq itself, and members of the press who were critics of the war and how it was conducted. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. His next film, "Inside Job," was released in 2010 and tackled the Wall Street financial crisis. The film lays out the history of Wall Street regulation and deregulation, the housing boom, how the financial bottom fell out in 2008, and how the Obama administration has done little since then to correct it. "Inside Job" won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2010.