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Leon Gast, the veteran filmmaker who won a Documentary Feature Oscar for helming the 1996 “Rumble in the Jungle” pic When We Were Kings, died Monday. He was 85.

The news was confirmed by the Woodstock Film Festival, of which Gast was a founding advisory board member and a 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award honoree.

Gast also won a Spirit Award, a Sundance Special Jury prize and a DGA Award nomination for When We Were Kings, which he also produced and edited. It told the fascinating story about the 1974 heavyweight title fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman held in Kinshasa, Zaire. The filmmaker later produced and directed The Trials of Muhammad Ali (2013), which aired the following year on PBS as under the Independent Lens banner. Gast won a News & Documentary Emmy and an International Documentary Association Award for that project.

Gast began his movie career after working for an ad agency in New...

Leon Gast, the Academy Award-winning director behind sport documentary “When We Were Kings,” died on Monday, according to Meira Blaustein, his close friend and the co-founder of Woodstock Film Festival. He was 85.

Blaustein shared the news of Gast’s death in a Facebook post. “He was a giant of a filmmaker, an absolute joy of a human being, and a very dear and beloved friend,” Blaustein wrote. “I am so grateful that I got to visit with him yesterday, tell him how much I loved him, how much he meant to all of us. I only wish I had stayed longer.”

“When We Were Kings,” which won best documentary feature at the 1997 Oscars, explores the iconic boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali that took place in Kinshasa, Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1974. Featuring historical footage and new interviews, the doc also examines the...

Producers Ken Mayer, Ryan Moore and exec producer Christine Peters are throwing docu-helmer Leon Gast back into the ring, essentially setting him up for his third boxing-related film. The doc film on Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao might fall into the realms of When We Were Kings - I expect the majority of the doc to focus on Pacman's story outside of the ring, but let's hope that they grab some mean footage from fight night. It just so happens that filming began during the week of his next heavyweight bout which will further prove if Pacquiao confirms his status as potentially the best boxer who ever lived or simply remind us that he isn't a super-human.  Gist: Just featured on 60 Minutes (see below), the doc will focus on boxer Manny Pacquiao's emergence from poverty, his election in May to the Congress of the Philippines and his plans to introduce legislation...