|  Greta
Schiller, Director
Greta Schiller is an independent director and producer of
documentaries for television, festivals, theatrical and educational
distribution. All Movie Guide writes "Director Greta
Schiller has traveled the world making extensively researched
and highly informative films". Her career was launched
in 1984 with the theatrical release and PBS broadcast of her
first feature documentary film, Before Stonewall. The
film premiered in the Berlin International Film Festival and
was showcased in over 75 film festivals worldwide. Now considered
a classic, Before Stonewall won two Emmy Awards. Time Out,
London, called it: "A near perfect blend of personal
story and historical archive".
In 1984, Greta Schiller co-founded Jezebel Productions, a
London/ New York company. With Andrea Weiss, she produced
and directed a trilogy of films about women in jazz: International
Sweethearts of Rhythm, Tiny and Ruby: Hell
Divin' Women and Maxine Sullivan: Love to
be in Love, all co-productions with Channel Four
Television in Great Britain. The Atlantic Journal wrote that
International Sweethearts of Rhythm "makes you glad documentaries
were invented." The New York Times called it "a
delightful trip down memory lane."
With funds from Channel Four in England and ITVS/PBS, she
wrote and directed a short fiction film Woman Of The
Wolf starring Alex Kingston (of television’s
ER). It played on the festival circuit and was broadcast nationally
in the U.S. and U.K.
Greta's highly acclaimed feature-length documentary, Paris
Was a Woman, premiered at the London and Berlin Film
Festivals. The film went on to win many awards at international
film festivals. It was released theatrically in the U.S.,
Germany, Spain and Great Britain, breaking house records in
several cities. The film was broadcast in 16 countries.
In 2000, Greta produced Escape To Life: The Erika
and Klaus Mann Story with funds from the Arts Council
of England, NY Council on the Humanities, Arte/ZDF, Hamburg
Film Fund, YLE TV2, and The Media Programme. Prior to that
she produced and directed The Man Who Drove With Mandela,
commissioned by Channel 4 UK, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
AVRO, Yle TV2, The British Film Fund, SABC, and The London
Production Fund. Featuring Corin Redgrave in a tour de force
one man show, the film won the Gay Teddy Bear Award for Best
Documentary at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Greta recently directed I Live At Ground Zero,
broadcast over German and French television, which offers
a child's eye view on September 11th. Recall Florida
about the recent campaign of Janet Reno for Governor of Florida.,
is currently on release.
Greta was the first recipient of the US/UK Fulbright Arts
Fellowship in Film. She has been a recipient of grants from
the NEA, NYSCA, NEH, New York Foundation for the Arts, London
Production Fund, European Media Fund and The Arts Council
of England, among others. |
 Andrea
Weiss, Director
Andrea Weiss is an author, filmmaker and educator. Her newest
drama/documentary is Escape
to Life: the Erika and Klaus Mann Story, which
premiered in the Rotterdam International Film Festival in
2001 and was a special festival program at Berlin. It was
chosen as the closing night event of the New German Film Series
at the Museum of Modern Art and won Best Documentary in Seattle.
Andrea is now writing a biography of Erika and Klaus Mann
for US publication. (German and Swedish editions are already
in print.)
Andrea's previous film, Seed
of Sarah, an experimental film combining documentary
filmmaking and avant garde opera, is a haunting tale of a
Hungarian girl's coming of age during the Holocaust. Seed
of Sarah was produced with the Banff Centre for the
Arts in Canada where Andrea was artist-in-residence in 1998,
and premiered in the Marseilles Documentary Festival, Vue
Sur les Docs. Andrea also directed and edited A
Bit of Scarlet, a feature-length documentary
essay film produced by the British Film Institute. A
Bit of Scarlet premiered in the 1996 Edinburgh Film
Festival, where it was chosen for "Best of the Fest",
and won Best Documentary at the Creteil women’s film
festival, Festival de Films de Femmes.
Andrea Weiss has collaborated with her partner Greta Schiller
on many documentary films including Paris
was Woman (writer/ producer), Before
Stonewall (research director), International
Sweethearts of Rhythm (producer/ director), and
Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin'
Women (producer/ director), which have been broadcast
all over the world, from Austria to Zimbabwe. These films
have won numerous awards including two Emmy Awards, First
Place at the American Film Festival, and the Audience Favorite
Award at Creteil and Berlin.
Paris was a Woman, Andrea's book on which
her documentary was based, won a 1996 Lambda Literary Award,
was the basis for a 5-part BBC Radio program, and has been
translated into French, Japanese and German (now in its fourth
printing). It is slated to be reissued by New York University
Press in 2002. Andrea is also the author of the critically
acclaimed Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in Film
(Penguin 1993).
She has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the
Arts grant, New York State Council on the Arts grants, a New
York Foundation for the Arts fellowship and the DAAD (Deutscher
Akademischer Austauchdienst) Artist Fellowship, with which
she lived as an Artist-in-Residence in Berlin in 1992-93.
Andrea has taught filmmaking at the International Film and
Photo Workshops in Rockport, Maine, and for many years ran
an intensive documentary course at the National Film and Television
School of Great Britain. She currently teaches in the film/
video program at City
College, the City University of New York. |
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