By the time Murray Lerner graduated from Harvard University, he had already co-produced and co-directed a full-length feature film that was LIFE Magazine's "Movie of the Week" and helped co-fund the first film production society in the school's history. Lerner felt that film should be a unified art and taught himself every aspect of filmmaking, an ideal he continues to prize to this day as an active writer, director, cinematographer and editor.
Most of Lerner's films have been recognized by major festivals and garnered awards, including “From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China”, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1980. His subjects have included Isaac Stern, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, Donovan, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, and The Who, the focus of “Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who”, nominated for a Grammy Award in 2009. A Class "A" Director of Photography and a member of both the Directors' and Writers' Guild of America, he was also a pioneer of the popular 3-D technology that is the industry standard today with the films “Sea Dream” and “Magic Journeys”. “Sea Dream”, seen in innovative SpaceVision, was the first 3-D film to ever be included in the Cannes Film Festival. “Magic Journeys”, created for the Kodak Pavilion at EPCOT and seen by over 60 million people worldwide, was the first to use computer animation, blue screen and other groundbreaking special effects.