Film
Avrich created Melbar Entertainment Group in 1998 to produce documentary films. Avrich has directed and produced many acclaimed documentaries and television specials. His focus is generally on the entertainment industry and television specials, including the music special, Bowfire for PBS (2008), One x One Gala (2007) for CTV and Caesar and Cleopatra (2009) for Bravo and CTV. Other films have chronicled defense attorney Edward Greenspan and the Rolling Stones promoter Michael Cohl, Winston Churchill, and David Steinberg. His 2010 film Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project was sold to IFC's Sundance Now channel in February 2011.
In 2017, Avrich announced plans for a docuseries on American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; however, he decided to scrap the project after Epstein's suicide in August, 2019, claiming the topic to be "too distasteful".[3] In 2018, Avrich directed and produced The Reckoning, the first "#metoo documentary on Harvey Weinstein, which premiered at Hot Docs Film Festival and was sold to CBC and Hulu. In 2018, Avrich produced and directed an acclaimed and award-winning documentary, Prosecuting Evil, on Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz, which was sold to Netflix. In 2019, Avrich directed and produced Off The Record, a biography of Grammy award-winning producer and composer David Foster, for Crave and Netflix, which premiered at TIFF. In 2020, Avrich produced Made You Look, a documentary about the infamous Knoedler Gallery art fraud scandal which was sold to Netflix.[4]
In 2021, Avrich directed and produced Oscar Peterson: Black + White, a docu-concert on jazz icon Oscar Peterson that had its world premiere at TIFF on September 12, 2021. In 2022, Avrich began production on three new documentaries: Without Precedent (on Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella), Sacrilege (narrated by Brian Cox), and The Palm Beach Diaries.
The Last Mogul (2005) is probably Avrich's best known film to date. The Variety critic Robert Koehler said of the documentary about Lew Wasserman that it "draws a full and balanced measure of the man, from his stratospheric rise to a remarkably humbling fall, and includes as thorough a study of the super-agent-turned-mogul's shady ties with organized crime as any feature docu could hope to muster."[5]
Awards and Controversy
In April 2022, Avrich received a Canadian Screen Award for Best Documentary Program for Oscar Peterson: Black + White. When called up to the mic to make an acceptance speech, his remarks ended with the following statement: "There are so many Black stories in Canada that need to be told. It doesn't matter who tells them, we just need to tell 'em." At least 11 Canadian film-sector organizations issued prompt statements condemning these remarks,[6] including the Black Screen Office, whose statement called out Avrich's "supreme disrespect of our history" that "cleverly weaponizes the non-Black community";[7] Reelworld Film Festival, whose statement called out Avrich's words as "reflective of a past system that we are working to change"; and, without naming Avrich, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television that is responsible for the Canadian Screen Awards.[8] Avrich's statement the next day said that he had "misspoke" and that "[o]f course, it matters who tells stories."[9]