Bobbie Birleffi is a versatile, experienced and EMMY-Award-winning documentary filmmaker. She has produced, directed and written critically acclaimed and highly rated one hour biographies, and specials on television, including: A&E "Biography of the Year;" BRAVO Profiles: Julie Taymor and Salma Hayek; VHI Legends: Tina Turner; COURT TV, specials for "The System," LIFETIME Intimate Portraits on Lauren Hutton and Bette Midler, and NBC News profiles on Katharine Hepburn and Hollywood mogul Dawn Steel. Recently, Bobbie directed the first two episodes of the historical reality series, "Texas Ranch House," which aired on PBS in May 2006. Called 'engaging and droll commentary on the American dream" by The Christian Science Monitor, the series transports a contemporary family back to a remote Texas Ranch House in the year 1867.

In 2000, Bobbie Birleffi and Beverly Kopf, the Emmy-award winning writer of ABC's "The View," created TVgals, Inc. The company has produced over 26 hours of documentary programming for WISDOM TELEVISION, a cutting edge health and spirituality network. In the fall of 2002, TVgals re-designed the studio set for LIFETIME'S "Intimate Portrait" series and produced and wrote Meredith Vieira's wraps for three years. TVgals has produced original non-fiction programming for COURT TV, BRAVO, and PBS.

Their latest projects include a one-hour documentary "Be Real: Stories from Queer America." Funded by Stolichnaya Vodka, it celebrates the lives of six everyday heroes in the GLBT community and is currently being screened at major film festivals across the country, including Sundance, New York, Miami and San Francisco. They are producing the behind-the-scenes DVD and TV special for "Across the Universe," a Sony Pictures musical drama, directed by Tony Award-winning Julie Taymor. Set in the 1960's, it features original performances of many of the Beatles classic hits.

Birleffi's roots in public television prepared her well for her rich and varied career in television. She has produced virtually every segment length from two minutes to two hours, covering breaking news to deep background pieces and biographies. In conjunction with The New York Times, she produced a one hour special for LIFETIME television called, "The Age of the Female Icon," and, as a staff producer for the CBS/Westinghouse daily magazine show, "Day & Date," she was responsible for several exclusive stories, including an interview with a Mark Fuhrman co-worker from the LAPD during the OJ Simpson story.

Throughout the eighties, Birleffi produced her own independent films, raising funds, writing, directing and producing her own documentaries for PBS. Her very first effort, a one-hour special produced about her home state of Wyoming, was called, "Is Anyone Home on the Range." The film was nominated for an EMMY and is still widely used by schools and community groups across the west. She then set out to make a documentary for the PBS award-winning series, Frontline called, "Men Who Molest." The piece won an EMMY. Her documentary, "The Mormons: Missionaries to the World," was nominated for an Independent Documentary Association award of Distinction and was hailed "brilliantly done" by The New York Times.

Birleffi is the consummate storyteller, and her work exhibits the professionalism and compassion she learned from her first boss, Bill Moyers. Birleffi's early work for the National Public Affairs Center for Television (NPACT) includes several outstanding documentaries. One of them was the EMMY nominated, "The Uniquiet Death of Julian and Ethel Rosenberg." For that special, Birleffi tracked down and interviewed nine out of the original twelve jurors and was the only journalist to locate Ethel Rosenberg's brother, David Greenglasss. She worked closely with Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil on a precursor to the MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour and later produced freelance feature stories for the Newshour.

In the late seventies, Birleffi worked as a Field Producer with Hugh Downs on a daily PBS magazine show on aging called Over Easy, produced by KQED/San Francisco. The series won a Peabody Award and several EMMYS.

Birleffi has also worked in feature film and served as a Second Assistant Director notably on "Tell Me A Riddle," directed by Lee Grant and First Assistant Director on the independent feature, "Wildrose," directed by John Hanson.

Birleffi received her B.A. degree in Broadcast & Film from Stanford University; and her Masters degree in Urban Affairs from Occidental College. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America, New York Women in Film and Television and has taught undergraduate film production at the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television. Birleffi has an abiding love of the performing arts, which she nurtured during her brief stint as a clown in San Francisco many years ago, where she studied with Bill Irwin and the Pickle Family Circus. She resides in New York City and Kerhonkson, New York.

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