Leon Gast , the veteran filmmaker who won a Documentary Feature Oscar for helming the 1996 "Rumble in the Jungle" pic When We Were Kings , died Monday. He was 85. The news was confirmed by the Woodstock Film Festival, of which Gast was a founding advisory board member and a 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award honoree. Gast also won a Spirit Award, a Sundance Special Jury prize and a DGA Award nomination for When We Were Kings, which he also produced and edited. It told the fascinating story about the 1974 heavyweight title fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman held in Kinshasa, Zaire. The filmmaker later produced and directed The Trials of Muhammad Ali (2013), which aired the following year on PBS as under the Independent Lens banner . Gast won a News & Documentary Emmy and an International Documentary Association Award for that project. Related Story Showbiz & Media Figures We’ve Lost In 2021 – Photo Gallery Gast began his movie career after working for an ad agency in New York and later as a photographer. The Woodstack fest passed along this story he told about getting into the industry: "What I needed first was a job in… Read full this story
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