Amber Edwards

Amber Edwards is an independent filmmaker who has produced, directed, and written eighteen critically acclaimed documentaries. Her first novel, “Forty Days and Forty Nights” by Amber Edwards & Justin Scott--her husband--will be published in October, 2021. It was inspired in part by the only film she started and did not compete about her eccentric cousin from the Arkansas Delta.

Amber’s most recent documentary profiles the New York hot jazz bandleader and preservationist Vince Giordano. "Vince Giordano--There's a Future in the Past" (2018, 90-minutes) is distributed theatrically by First Run Features, and was co-produced and co-directed by Dave Davidson, her longtime filmmaking collaborator at Hudson West Productions. Amber directed, produced, and edited--with Davidson as Co-Producer and Director of Photography--all nine episodes of the PBS series "Michael Feinstein's American Songbook." The series ran from 2010-2013, and Season One received the ASCAP Deems Taylor Broadcast Award for Outstanding Musical Content, as well as two International Documentary Association Award nominations. With Davidson as Director and Co-producer, Amber co-produced, wrote, and edited "A Place Out of Time—The Bordentown School" (PBS, 2010.) Narrated by Ruby Dee, it told the story of the rise and fall of an exceptional African American institution. That film won The Christopher Award, for television specials that "affirm the highest values of the human spirit." Amber directed, produced, and edited "Words and Music by Jerry Herman" (PBS, 2008) about the legendary Broadway composer/lyricist. In 2001, PBS broadcast her film "George Segal: American Still Life," a portrait of the pioneering Pop Art sculptor. Amber and Dave also collaborated on the observational "Quicksand and Banana Peels: A Year in the Life of Two Principals" (PBS, 1998.) On her own, Amber directed, produced, and edited "Against the Odds: Artists of the Harlem Renaissance" (PBS, 1994) which examined the flowering African American visual art scene during the 1920s and ‘30s. And she traveled to Moscow to produce/direct/edit "Vladimir Feltsman: Journey From Home" (PBS, 1993) following the refusenik concert pianist on his first trip back to the Soviet Union after he had emigrated to the USA. Amber's first documentary, co-produced and directed by Davidson, premiered on PBS in 1992. "The Dancing Man—Peg Leg Bates" is the story of the one-legged black tap dancer and Catskills resort owner, who Amber first met in 1985 during her second job as a local TV news reporter.

Amber worked in broadcast television as an on-air host, producer, and director for more than two decades while also operating an independent not-for-profit production company, Hudson West Productions. She grew up in Kansas City and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in English Literature. Amber lives in Connecticut with her husband and literary collaborator Justin Scott.