 |
| (from left to right): Andrea Weiss, Greta
Schiller, and Alain Marchand, director of the Cinematheque
francaise, at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 1996 |
JEZEBEL PRODUCTIONS
grew out of Andrea Weiss’ and Greta
Schiller’s collaboration on the groundbreaking
documentary, BEFORE
STONEWALL, directed by Schiller in 1984. The
film was the first gay or lesbian film to be funded by the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting. When the film was broadcast
nationally over PBS, the response ranged from disgust and
outrage that public television would show such a film to people
writing in that the film was a lifeline. Schiller and Weiss
won Emmy Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, and dozens of
domestic and international awards. The film launched their
careers in the international independent film scene.
From the very beginning, Schiller and Weiss were true independents,
making films that reflected their political and artistic ideals.
Strongly influenced by the New Left and the women’s
and gay liberation movements of the 1970s, they set out to
make documentary films that uncover, reconstruct, and celebrate
the lives of ordinary people doing extraordinary things; often
these were people whose lives were overlooked and systematically
erased from cultural memory. Twenty years later, despite chronic
funding obstacles and a stubborn attraction to marginal subjects,
they are still doing just that, using a variety of styles
to tell their stories.
Schiller and Weiss went on to create INTERNATIONAL
SWEETHEARTS OF RHYTHM, which premiered in the
New York Film Festival in 1986. How could it be that this
all-female, multi-racial big band was headlining the Apollo
Theatre in the 1940s, playing to sold-out mobs, and yet were
not even mentioned in the jazz history books? INTERNATIONAL
SWEETHEARTS OF RHYTHM was followed shortly by TINY
& RUBY: HELL DIVIN’ WOMEN, a film that
spotlights one outrageously funny trumpeter from the Sweethearts
band, billed as “The Female Louis Armstrong”,
and her life-long partner on and off the bandstand.
The critical and popular success of these two short documentaries
moved Jezebel Productions into high gear, and over the next
few years there was a flurry of international co-production,
aided in part by Schiller being awarded the first ever US-UK
Fulbright Arts Fellowship in Film. Her MAXINE
SULLIVAN: LOVE TO BE IN LOVE, a portrait of the
long forgotten jazz star, received positive reviews and prime-time
broadcasts in France and Britain. Schiller made a foray into
fiction, and directed the quirky short WOMAN
OF THE WOLF, based on a 1905 short story by poet
Renee Vivien. Funded by ITVS, this strange fantasy film set
on a cargo ship was well received on the festival circuit
before it was broadcast over PBS and Britain’s Channel
Four (the broadcast was chosen as a “Critic’s
Choice” by the Sunday Times of London).
But the huge labor of love that Jezebel Productions embarked
on, taking five years to produce and, when finally finished,
achieving the impossible for a documentary – it broke
house records upon its theatrical release – was PARIS
WAS A WOMAN. Because of their great love for
the city of Paris, for the era of the Twenties, and for the
women that flocked there at that time, Schiller and Weiss
were determined to produce this film despite all odds. The
film received virtually unanimous praise from the critics
upon its release, but it was the overwhelming audience response
that was most gratifying to the filmmakers. Tickets were scalped
at the Berlin Film Festival premiere as though it were a rock
concert; long lines ran around city blocks when it opened
in the Seattle Film Festival. And by sheer good luck, the
programmer for the Quad Cinema in New York City was standing
in that line, which led to a very successful New York theatrical
release.
After the huge challenges of producing PARIS WAS A WOMAN,
Schiller and Weiss felt the need to challenge themselves further
as filmmakers and experiment more directly with the documentary
form. Schiller’s THE
MAN WHO DROVE WITH MANDELA, a portrait of Cecil
Williams, white theatre director who was both an ANC activist
in apartheid South Africa and a flamboyant gay man in the
sexually repressive Fifties, combined historical documentary
with a theatrically staged one-man show (starring Corin Redgrave).
The crazy grafting of these two styles turned out to be a
risk worth taking: the film won an award for Best Documentary
at the Berlin Film Festival – the first South African
film ever to win an international award -- and was a runaway
theatrical hit in South Africa. Although few there had ever
heard of Cecil Williams before, overnight he became a posthumous
hero.
At the same time Weiss directed SEED
OF SARAH, a half hour experimental documentary
telling the story of a Hungarian girl, Judith Magyar, growing
up during World War II. Historical documentary footage combines
with an avant garde opera drawn from her memoirs; the sumptuous
voice of internationally acclaimed vocalist Angelina Réaux
is interwoven with Judith Magyar’s spoken thoughts as
she looks back on memories she had long repressed. A co-production
with the Banff Centre for the Arts, the film premiered in
the Marseilles Documentary Film Festival and was broadcast
in several European countries.
Schiller and Weiss went on to combine fiction and documentary
genres in their feature film, ESCAPE
TO LIFE: THE ERIKA AND KLAUS MANN STORY, which
features the voices of Vanessa and Corin Redgrave as the siblings
Erika and Klaus Mann. Produced by Schiller, and written and
directed by Weiss (together with fiction director Wieland
Speck), ESCAPE TO LIFE was a festival and theatrical success
across Europe and has been broadcast in Germany numerous times.
It had a sold-out audience at its premiere at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York City, was chosen for California’s
Laemmle Theatres’ Doc Days series, and toured in the
Southern Circuit independent film series across the American
South. Weiss wrote a companion book to the film which was
published to critical acclaim in Germany and is forthcoming
as a full-length literary biography in the United States in
2006, under the title “In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain:
The Erika and Klaus Mann Story”.
Recently Schiller and Weiss have worked in digital production,
making films about contemporary subjects, although they still
have a keen interest in history. Jezebel Productions’
newest releases include I
LIVE AT GROUND ZERO, broadcast over European
television, about the aftermath of the tragedy through the
eyes of a nine year old girl who experienced it first-hand,
and RECALL FLORIDA,
a road movie following Janet Reno’s 2002 campaign for
Governor of Florida, another stolen election story in Florida
that was not reported as such on the news.
After twenty years and more than a dozen films, Jezebel
Productions remains steadfast in its determination to tell
the stories of ordinary, exceptional people, who can inspire
us and make us think about our own purpose on earth. Schiller
and Weiss have developed considerably as filmmakers along
the way, but they never stopped putting their work and their
lives where their hearts are. The body of work they created
over these two decades continues to be innovative, thought-provoking
and yet entertaining. The pleasures of these films remain
undiminished by time and their messages remain as vital today
as ever. |
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