Greta Schiller

Greta Schiller is an American film director and producer, best known for the 1984 documentary Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community and the 1995 documentary Paris Was a Woman .

Greta Schiller
Born	1954 (age 68–69) Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation(s)	Director, producer, editor, cinematographer
Years active	1978–present
Known for	Before Stonewall Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin' Women Paris Was a Woman The Man Who Drove with Mandela
Partner	Andrea Weiss

Personal life

Schiller received the US/UK Fulbright Arts Fellowship in Film and grants from multiple organisations.^[1] She is openly lesbian.^[2]

Career

Her 1976 film Greta's Girls is, following Barbara Hammer, one of the first independent short films to focus on lesbians.^[3]

She had a part directing the 1981 documentary Greetings from Washington, D.C. which details the first important LGBT walk in 1979.^[3]

In 1984, Schiller and Andrea Weiss founded Jezebel Productions, a nonprofit women's film production company based in New York City. Schiller and Weiss were strongly influenced by both the New Left movement and the women's and gay liberation movements of the 1970s.^[4]

In 1985, Schiller directed Before Stonewall,^[3] which won two Emmy awards.^{[citation needed]} Before Stonewall was the first gay or lesbian film to be funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.^[4] Schiller and Weiss subsequently collaborated on International Sweethearts of Rhythm (1986), about African American women musicians performing in the 1930s to 1940s; Tiny & Ruby: Hell Divin' Women (1988), and Paris Was a Woman (1996).^[3][5][6][7] Paris Was a Woman, about creative lesbians in 1920s Paris, was a labor of love for the two filmmakers, taking 5 years to produce and breaking house records.^[4] In 2023, Schiller and Weiss co-directed The Five Demands.

Schiller directed Maxine Sullivan: Love to Be In Love (1990),^[1] Woman of the Wolf (1994), The Man Who Drove With Mandela (1998), I Live At Ground Zero (2002),^[1] and The Marion Lake Story: Defeating the Mighty Phragmite (2014). She produced and directed No Dinosaurs in Heaven (2010), about the problem of creationists infiltrating science education.^{[citation needed][8][9]} In 2020, she directed The Land of Azaba, the first feature documentary on the subject of ecological restoration. Set in one of the world’s first “hot spots” for increasing and maintaining bio-diversity, Campanarios de Azaba Nature Reserve in Western Spain, the film premiered in the Valladolid International Film Festival and won "Best Cinematography" in the Mystic Film Festival.

Films

Before Stonewall combines interviews with multiple forms of media that shows the history of gays and lesbians during the early 20th century to the 1960s.^[10]

The Advocate said that Greta Schiller is "gifted".^{[clarification needed]}

Time Out New York wrote that Paris Was a Woman might cause viewers to "want to leave their spouse and move to Paris.^[2]

The author of Black Popular Culture included a picture from the film Maxine Sullivan: Love to Be In Love on the first page of the book.^[11]

The Atlantic Journal wrote that International Sweethearts of Rhythm "makes you glad documentaries were invented."^[1]

Awards and nominations

Greta Schiller has won numerous awards over her career. Before Stonewall earned her an award at the Torino Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, as well as a Grand Jury Nomination at the Sundance Film Festival.^{[citation needed]}

Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin' Women earned Schiller a Teddy at the Berlin International Film Festival.^{[citation needed]} She won another Teddy in 1999 for Best Documentary for The Man Who Drove with Mandela.^{[citation needed][8]} The film also won Best Documentary at the Milan International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Documentary at the Newport International Film Festival in Rhode Island.^[12]

In 2019, Schiller’s film Before Stonewall was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[13]

Filmography

• Greta's Girls (1978)
• Greetings from Washington, D.C. (1981)
• Before Stonewall (1984)
• International Sweethearts of Rhythm (1986)
• Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin' Women (1989)
• Maxine Sullivan: Love to Be In Love (1990)
• Woman of the Wolf (1994)
• Paris Was a Woman (1996)
• The Man Who Drove with Mandela (1998)
• Seed of Sarah (1998)
• Escape To Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story (2000) (directed by Andrea Weiss)
• I Live at Ground Zero (2002)
• U.N. Fever (2008)
• No Dinosaurs in Heaven (2010)
• The Marion Lake Story: Defeating the Mighty Phragmite (2014)
• Bones of Contention (2017)
• The Land of Azaba (2020)

See also

• List of female film and television directors
• List of lesbian filmmakers
• List of LGBT-related films directed by women
• List of LGBT people from New York City

References

1. "Greta Schiller, Director". Jezebel Productions. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
2. Mark J. Huisman (1996). "City of lesbian fight/In Profile". The Advocate. Here Publishing: 64. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
3. Haggerty, George; Bonnie Zimmerman (2000). Encyclopedia of lesbian and gay histories and cultures, Volume 1. Taylor & Francis. p. 243. ISBN 978-0-8153-3354-8. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
4. "Jezebel Productions, About". Retrieved May 7, 2012.
5. Van Gelder, Lawrence (November 8, 1996). "Smart, Free And Female In Paris". The New York Times. p. Section C, 4. Retrieved May 3, 2020.
6. Levy, Emanuel (July 6, 2019). "Paris Was a Woman (1996): Schiller's Docu of Lesbian Writers". Emanuel Levy Cinema 24/7. Retrieved May 3, 2020.
7. . Queer Documentaries. Archived from the original on May 3, 2020. Retrieved May 3, 2020.
8. "Jezebel Productions".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
9. "Greta Schiller, New Day Films".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
10. Piontek, Thomas (2006). Queering gay and lesbian studies. University of Illinois Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-252-07280-2. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
11. Wallace, Michele; Gina Dent (1998). Black Popular Culture. The New Press. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-56584-459-9. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
12. Greta Schiller's IMDb Awards page
13. Chow, Andrew R. (December 11, 2019). "See the 25 New Additions to the National Film Registry, From Purple Rain to Clerks". Time. New York, NY. Retrieved December 11, 2019.

Further reading

• Savage, Ann M. (2008). "Women film directors and producers". Butler University. (book chapter from LGBTQ America Today: An Encyclopedia (2008), ISBN 978-0313339905)

External links

• Greta Schiller at IMDb
• Jezebel Productions