---
name: "Vivian Kleiman"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/vivian-kleiman"
fi1m_id: "vivian-kleiman"
tmdb_id: 1874669
roles: ["Cinematographer"]
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-26T02:11:02.124145+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Vivian Kleiman

## Identity

Vivian Kleiman

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/vivian-kleiman
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** vivian-kleiman
- **TMDB ID:** 1874669
- **Same entity:** https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1874669

Cinematographer.

## Details

- **Work:** Cinematographer
- **Elsewhere:** https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1874669

## Biography

Vivian Kleiman is a documentary filmmaker, producer and director whose work has been broadcast on PBS and screened at festivals including Sundance, Toronto and Berlin. She served as additional cinematographer on Marlon Riggs’s *Tongues Untied* (1989/1990) and collaborated with him as producer and research director on *Color Adjustment* (1992). Together they co-founded the production company Signifyin’ Works.

Kleiman has produced or executive produced several documentaries for national PBS broadcast, including *Roam Sweet Home* (1996), *The Key of G* (2007) and the series *The Meaning of Food* (2004), on which she also served as senior producer and series director. Her later credits as director and producer include the feature *No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics* (2021), which premiered at Tribeca and aired on Independent Lens. She taught in Stanford University’s Graduate Program in Documentary Film and Video Production from 1995 to 2004.

Her work has received a George Foster Peabody Award, an International Documentary Association Outstanding Achievement Award, the Organization of American Historians’ Eric Barnouw Award and a National Emmy Award nomination for research. She also supervised completion of Riggs’s final film, *Black Is…Black Ain’t*.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, vtape.org, viviankleiman.com, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Tongues Untied* (1990), Fi1m 82, Cinematography, Director of Photography — [page](https://film.one/film/tongues-untied.md)

## Complete filmography (7)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics* (2021), Producer, Director
- *Last Day of Freedom* (2015), Executive Producer
- *The Key of G* (2007), Executive Producer
- *Hope Along the Wind: The Story of Harry Hay* (2002), Executive Producer
- *First Person Plural* (2000), Executive Producer
- *Tongues Untied* (1990), Director of Photography — Fi1m 82, [page](https://film.one/film/tongues-untied.md)
- *Routes of Exile: A Moroccan Jewish Odyssey* (1982), Producer

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/vivian-kleiman