Bill Jersey, the veteran Bay Area documentarian behind two Academy Award-nominated films, has died aged 99. He passed away on 24 July at his home in Lambertville, New Jersey, from congestive heart failure, his wife Shirley Kessler confirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Over a career spanning more than fifty years, Jersey wrote, directed, shot, edited and produced documentaries, earning Oscar nominations for A Time for Burning (1967) and Super Chief: The Life and Legacy of Earl Warren (1990), as well as three Emmy nominations, including for the PBS miniseries The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. He founded Quest Productions in 1960, later basing it at Berkeley's Zaentz Media Center, where he mentored generations of filmmakers for around 40 years. Born in Queens in 1927, he trained at USC's School of Cinematic Arts before building a career that included A Time for Burning's induction into the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2005.