Dennis Goulden is a documentarian who has worked as a cameraman, editor, writer, executive producer, producer and director on hundreds of films, and has received over a dozen Emmys and hundreds of other awards for his many years of work.
Goulden was born in London, Ontario. As a child he knew he wanted to be a filmmaker, and bought his first camera when he was twelve. He graduated from London South Collegiate Institute in 1954, and began working for the London Free Press and moved to the television station owned by the newspaper, CFPL-TV in London. He served four years in the Royal Canadian Air Force Reserve while beginning his television career as "a prop man at CFPL. That meant setting scenery up, and doing any dirty work necessary. Canadian TV was five years behind America in program development but management at CFPL were incredibly supportive of their creative staff and allowed them to create many first-of types of programs. He got in on the ground floor." By 1959, Dennis was given a mandate to create a documentary unit and he began producing documentaries at CFPL and in 1960 began producing a new documentary series The World Around Us, which won several major Canadian awards. In 1964 he was recruited by then KYW-TV and moved to Cleveland, Ohio to produce documentaries for Westinghouse-owned KYW-TV. His first documentary was an hour long show on how farmers were losing their land. It was a pivotal experience for him. Then he worked on a Dr. Benjamin Spock documentary named "The Victims" produced in cooperation with the Anti-Defamation League out of New York that eventually won a silver medal at the Cannes Film Festival. He worked with Millard Lampell on that program. Lampell had been victim of "blacklisting" back in the 1950s. Goulden also produced long-form documentaries for a Westinghouse series called Focal Point Poverty with hosts like Carl Stern and Bud Dancy.