Paul Leder; Award-Winning Independent Filmmaker

Paul Leder, 70, who produced and directed 23 independent films including the award-winning “Goin’ to Chicago.” A peace and nuclear disarmament activist for many years, Leder served in the Army during World War II and as a medic treated survivors at the liberated Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. He began his career as an actor in Broadway musicals and later acted and directed on Los Angeles stages. Turning to low-budget filmmaking, he won the first Best of Fest Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in 1990 for “Goin’ to Chicago.” The film chronicled the lives of blacks and whites involved in the presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy and the disruptive Chicago Democratic National Convention in 1968. Although Leder did not experience youthful rebellion in that era, he said he made the film by trying to imagine what his children went through. Among his other films were “Molly and Gina,” “Killing Obsession” and “Frame Up.” On April 9 in Los Angeles of lung cancer.