Faculty
Jonathan Dana has been a pioneer in the independent film business since 1971. He has supervised the acquisition, production, and/or distribution of over 100 films. His current credits include executive producing 2021’s The Ice Road, starring Liam Neeson, which sold to Netflix in the U.S. for a record $18 million and premiered as the number one show across the platform; executive producing the 2021 Venice and Telluride premiere Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Life, a Song, to be released theatrically in 2022 by Sony Pictures Classics; and serving as consulting producer on the upcoming music biodoc Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity, currently in post production.
Jonathan served as Director of Acquisitions and Development at The Samuel Goldwyn Company, President of Motion Pictures and Television at Atlantic Releasing, CEO of specialized distribution company Triton Pictures, and is a long time executive producing partner with Code Entertainment.
Among other awards, his movies have won numerous prizes at both Sundance and Cannes. His films include dramas The Spitfire Grill, A World Apart, Patty Hearst, Extremities, Mindwalk, Stormy Monday, Palmetto, Noel, Kill the Irishman, and The Forger; comedies Valley Girl, Teen Wolf, Night of the Comet, Wish You Were Here, Drowning Mona, Scorched, You Kill Me, and the classic early pay-tv anthology series Likely Stories; foreign language films Soldier of Orange, The Hairdresser’s Husband, and Toto the Hero; and documentaries Ballets Russes, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse, A Brief History of Time, The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, Oscar nominee Colors Straight Up and his own directorial debut Sandstone (1975), recently profiled on CNN’s The Seventies. As producer’s representative Dana’s credits include sleeper hit What the Bleep Do We Know, Spirit Award nominee We Were Here, and Sundance Audience Award winner and Spirit Award winner and Oscar nominee, The Invisible War.
Dana was an initial investor and supervised the launch of the online indie film community Withoutabox.com, subsequently purchased as an operating division of Amazon’s IMDb.
Dana is a graduate of Dartmouth College and holds an MBA and a PhD from Stanford Business School. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.