Janet Knutsen: 2024 Frank Capra Achievement Award

December 27, 2023

UPM Janet Knutsen will become the 38th recipient of the Frank Capra Achievement Award, which will be presented at the DGA Awards ceremony on February 10, 2024. The Capra Award is given to an Assistant Director or Unit Production Manager in recognition of their career and service to the industry and the DGA.

A graduate of the Assistant Directors Training Program, Knutsen joined the Guild as a 2nd AD in 1981. She amassed AD credits on features including Bob Clark’s Rhinestone, Ron Howard’s Gung Ho and Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky IV as well as nearly 100 television episodes on series including Sisters, Tracey Takes On… and The Practice before moving into the arena that would become her calling, Production Management. As a UPM, her credits list features including Sam Taylor-Johnson’s A Million Little Pieces and Trish Sie’s Sitting in Bars with Cake; movies for television including Joey Soloway’s Transparent Musicale Finale; and hundreds of episodes of series including Boston Legal and Rizzoli & Isles. She even directed a few episodes of Sisters early in her career, granting her full appreciation of all parts of the process.

Knutsen’s dedication to DGA service began only a few years after she joined the Guild when she was elected as a member of the Western AD/UPM Council in 1985. She would go on to serve 15 terms on the Council as a member or an alternate and served as Secretary/Treasurer from 2020-2022.

Her Council appointments also include the Administrative Committee where she served as Chair from 2020 to present; membership on the Constitution & By-Laws Review Sub-Committee in 1986 and being selected as a delegate to eight DGA Biennial Conventions from 2009-2023. Beyond her work on the Council, she was also recently appointed to the DGA’s new Sustainable Future Committee and has served as a commissioner on the California Film Commission since 2008.

But it is Knutsen’s work with the DGA Training Plan, that is one of her most cherished accomplishments. A Trustee since 2009, she was the DGPTP Secretary in 2011, and has served on the Screening & Admissions Committee and the Curriculum & Progress Committee for the past decade more recently on the Finance Committee since 2019. “Nearly every thread in my career leads back to the DGA Training Plan,” said Knutsen. “I’m especially proud of my part in keeping the wheels of the Plan turning, keeping its resources flowing, and serving the community of trainees and future trainees with the attention and care they deserve.”

On being lauded by her peers as the latest Capra recipient she said, “When Lesli Linka Glatter called to say I’d been tapped for the Capra Award, I was speechless. What an honor. To be in the company of Abby Singer, Cheryl Downey, Yudi Bennett, Duncan Henderson? People I revere! I’m humbled and grateful to be recognized next to them. The DGA has given me so much — friends, mentors, a world-class education in a career I love, more opportunity than I ever imagined. It’s a great joy to give back where I can.”

Janet Knutsen accepts the 2024 Frank Capra Achievement Award

Past recipients of the Frank Capra Achievement Award: