Jill Godmilow Pro

Bio:

            As a producer/director, Jill Godmilow has earned a substantial reputation during more than four decades of film and video making.  Considered one of the primary theoreticians/practitioners in the American non-fiction genre, she has been interviewed in American Film, Afterimage, In These Times, The Independent, History and Theory, Text Performance Quarterly and featured in international festivals since 1973.  Her 1971 TALES (made with Cassandra Gerstein and an all-female crew) is a “performed documentary” about how we tell stories about sexual experiences, which Jonas Mekas called the most interesting film in the Whitney Museum’s “New American Filmmakers Series” that year.  Her ANTONIA: A PORTRAIT OF THE WOMAN, (co-directed with folksinger Judy Collins in 1973) was the first independently produced American documentary to enjoy extensive theatrical exhibition in the United States and broadcast in eleven foreign countries.  Among other honors, it received an Academy Award nomination and the Independent New York Film Critics Award, “Best Documentary”.

            Most of Godmilow's productions are in the realm of non-fiction, including NEVELSON IN PROCESS, a portrait of the sculptress, Louise Nevelson, and THE ODYSSEY TAPES, about Richard Dyer-Bennett's 24-hour performance of Homer's "Odyssey".  With the Ethnic Art Center, she produced and directed THE POPOVICH BROTHERS OF SOUTH CHICAGO, the story of a family of Serbian American musicians in South Chicago, and for the producers Chiquita and Andre Gregory, she directed THE VIGIL, a study of the para-theatrical work of the acclaimed Polish company "Teatr Laboratorium" and WITH GROTOWSKI AT NIENADOWKA, 1980 on the work of Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski.

            In 1984, her non-fiction feature, FAR FROM POLAND, about the contradictions of the Polish Solidarity movement, was heralded for breaking new ground in the documentary genre.  Its radical deconstructive approach and juxtaposition of fact and fiction led directly to the genesis of a dramatic feature film, WAITING FOR THE MOON, a feminist/modernist "fiction" about the lives of the famous literary couple, Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein, (played by Academy Award winner, Linda Hunt, and British stage actress, Linda Bassett).  WAITING FOR THE MOON was produced for PBS's "American Playhouse" series and released theatrically by Skouras Pictures.  It was honored at numerous national and international film festivals (First Prize at the Sundance Film Festival) and enjoyed broadcast theatrical distribution in France, Germany, England, Australia, Sweden and Japan.