Ira Deutchman is best known as a producer, distributor and marketer of independent films, but in 2000, he moved into film exhibition as Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Emerging Pictures—a New York-based digital exhibition company, which was sold in January, 2015 to Vancouver-based 20 Year Media He also served as Chair of the Film Program at Columbia University School of the Arts from 2011 to 2015, where he has been a Professor of Professional Practice for more than 25 years. Deutchman is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He was one of the original creative advisors to the Sundance Institute and formerly served on the Board of Advisors for the Sundance Film Festival. He has also served as a Board member and former Board chair for the Independent Feature Project, the Board of Advisors for the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, the Williamstown Film Festival, IFP/West, and the Collective for Living Cinema, and was a member of the Board for Kartemquin Films. In 2015, he donated his personal archives to the University of Michigan's Screen Arts Mavericks and Makers Collection. Deutchman continues to produce films while consulting on the marketing and distribution of independent films, and teaching producing students in the MFA Film Program at Columbia University's School of the Arts. Current projects include a film adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich's best-selling book "Nickel and Dimed," a theatrical adaptation of Joan Micklin Silver's 1976 independent film "Hester Street" and a documentary about art film maverick Donald Rugoff, which had its World Premiere at.the 2019 DOC NYC Festival in New York. He consults for Luce Cinecitta on the marketing of Italian cinema in the United States. Deutchman was awarded the first annual Spotlight Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2017 Sundance Art House Convergence.