Over a Barrel: The Truth About Oil
Nominated for a 2010 Emmy Award for Outstanding Business and Economic Reporting

Our Work
View The Documentary Group clip reel

Lafayette: The Lost Hero
Airs on PBS September 13th

The Constitution Project honored
Yick Wo and the Equal Protection Clause wins CINE Masters Series Award. Yick Wo also won a Platinum Hermes Creative Award, a Silver Hugo Award, and two Telly Awards; Korematsu and Civil Liberties receives Gold Hermes Creative Award (AMCP)
Robe Imbriano
Producer / Writer / Director


Robe Imbriano has produced for everyone from Peter Jennings to Bill Moyers, from Ted Koppel to Oprah Winfrey, winning numerous awards along the way.

In over a decade at ABC News, he was part of the production teams that first brought to air series’ such as PrimeTime Live, Day One, and World News Now, as well as special events such as The Century. Known for his coverage of America’s marginalized and dispossessed, Imbriano specialized in first-person narratives and small format pieces long before digital technology made these genres popular. While at Day One, hosted by Forrest Sawyer, he established the “Inside Out” series of first-person narratives shot entirely on Hi-8 video. There, he brought the voices of gang members, Native Americans, inner city teenagers and others to prime time network television.

He has participated in two award-winning series for Nightline. He was part of a team of producers that spent months shooting throughout the juvenile justice institutions of San Jose. This series was produced in conjunction with Frontline, and aired as a 90-minute broadcast for that show as well. And his series on Hip Hop with Robert Krulwich earned a Gerald Loeb Award Finalist citation for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism in Television.

He also spent two years at CBS News, garnering an Emmy nomination while at 48 Hours for work on an hour about accusations of child abuse in Wenatchee, Washington.

Away from the Networks, Imbriano was an associate professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and he wrote a frequently republished Op-Ed piece for the New York Times about his difficulties as an African-American catching a cab in New York. In 1999, he founded Crystal Stair Productions, Inc., his own production company dedicated to bringing traditionally marginalized stories to a national audience.

With Crystal Stair, one New York City school that was the subject of an hour he produced and edited with Robert Krulwich for Now, with Bill Moyers, earned over a million dollars in contributions after the show aired. An hour he produced and edited for MSNBC about the challenges faced by former prisoners reentering society won a Cine Gold Eagle. And he was the executive producer of BET’s highly acclaimed prime time public affairs show, The Jeff Johnson Chronicles.

He has also won (or has been part of a team of producers that has won) awards ranging from the Casey Foundation Gold Medal (for coverage of children’s issues) to a Daytime Emmy, the Dupont, a James Beard Nomination and more.

He currently lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Helena, and daughter, Lu.