Jill Godmilow
- 2001
In 1990, the Mabou Mines theatre group worked to perform an adapted version of Shakespeare's King Lear featuring gender-polarized characters and set in the United States in the 1950s. Directed by Jill Godmilow, Lear '87 Archive follows the cast and crew as they prepare for the controversial production. Culled from days worth of footage, the final product ran six hours. Godmilow is the director of the documentary What's Underground About Marshmallows: Ron Vawter Performs Jack Smith and the 1987 made-for-PBS film Waiting for the Moon. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- 1999
This collection of 15 short films by undergraduate students at Notre Dame University comes from Facets Video. The Loft Tapes: Student Films From Notre Dame features films shot between 1993 and 1997 under the supervision of veteran filmmaker Jill Godmilow. The films featured include Eate Mate Die, Niles Street, Lungwamen, Is Your Money That Good, The School, At the Clinic: Upstairs, Midweek, Full Frontal, Restroom, Where I'm From, Pocket Guide to White Youth, Last Laugh, You Will Pay, Leather Coat, and Love Dad. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- 1996
What's Underground About Marshmallows: Ron Vawter Performs Jack Smith, a "reperformance piece" recorded at New York City's "The Kitchen," is based on the late gay filmmaker Jack Smith's 1981 piece of the same title. The 60-minute program tells the story of the rivalry between Smith and avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas. The late Ron Vawter portrays Smith accusing Mekas of making illegal copies of his films. A highlight includes the "nightmare" segment where Smith fails to prove Mekas' infringement. ~ Kathleen Wildasin, All Movie Guide
- 1994
Based on a popular one-man play and filmed in a single day at the theatrical space the Kitchen in 1993, this avant-garde drama contrasts the lives of two famous homosexuals, both of whom died of AIDS in the 1980s. Both men are played by original castmember Ron Vawter. Roy Cohn was a gay-bashing right-wing lawyer and a steadfast protector of the "American Family." He was also a closet homosexual. Jack Smith was an openly gay experimental filmmaker who was credited as one of the fathers of performance art. In this film version of the play, the opposing lives of the two men are woven together, whereas on stage, they were profiled in two separate acts. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ron Vawter
Well into the 1930s, there was an expatriate community of Americans who lived in Paris or the French countryside, and who eventually became influential artists and writers. These included the painter Edward Hopper, the writer Ernest Hemingway, and the musician Virgil Thomson. Writer and poet Gertrude Stein and her lifelong companion Alice B. Toklas (perhaps best known for her marijuana recipes) were the patrons of these and other artists, including Guillaume Apollinaire. In this PBS American Playhouse movie, the two are seen in the mid-1930s, and the unflinching loyalty and love that Toklas (Linda Hunt) offered to her irascible companion Stein (Linda Bassett) is the subject of this moving, extremely erudite drama. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Linda Hunt, Linda Bassett, (more)
After Jill Godmilow failed to gain entry into Poland in the early 1980s to make a documentary on the Gdansk strike and the Solidarity movement, she created this docudrama that is meant to tell her story, as well as that of the strikers and the woman who began it all, Anna Walentynowicz (Elzbieta Komorowska). Undoubtedly upset at being rejected, the contrast between Godmilow's problems and the difficulties faced by the down-to-earth Anna is uncomfortably great. Anna has been fired from her job after 30 years of dedicated service at minimal wages, and the workers rally around her -- marking the beginning of the Gdansk strikes. Anna and others of her generation are brought forward in re-enacted interviews in the better segments of this docudrama, while Godmilow's own ruminations and commentaries are somehow less convincing in comparison. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Fitzgerald, Jill Godmilow, (more)
- 1981
Tap dancing had been a racially-divided art for many years, as witnessed in several of the interviews in this 39-minute documentary. Honi Coles talks about his own experiences in a white-dominated business that tended to keep black tap dancers on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. The Nicholas Brothers are also interviewed, and their early work is contrasted with the scenes of their introduction to Redd Fox's Las Vegas act. Routines in modern recitals and work-outs in current classes are shown in detail, revealing some of the training that is needed to achieve a level of high technical and artistic skill - not always appreciated in the past. The long hours of practice might suddenly pay off in hugely successful stage productions like "Oklahoma" that brought in crowds to watch tap dancing, and kept it alive as a uniquely American dance form. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
The traumatic history of the Aboriginal people of Borroloola is told by the very people who were present to witness the massacres, institutionalization, and geographical displacement that they suffered in this unflinching ethnographic documentary from filmmakers Carolyn Strachan and Alessandro Cavadini. Residing in the remote Northern Territory of Australia, these peaceful Aboriginals have been perpetually torn between the centuries-old code of their own people and the barbarous conditions imposed upon them by European settlers. Divided into four parts including "Police Times," "Welfare Times," "Struggle for Our Land," and "Living with Two Laws," this film follows the people of Borroloola from their confrontations with white settlers and police in the 1930s to their pilgrimage back to their traditional land at the turn of the 21st Century. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carolyn Strachan, Alessandro Cavadini, (more)
- 1980
The gifted and intuitive, Oscar-nominated director Jill Godmilow (Antonia: Portrait of a Woman) in 1974) helms this 1980 documentary - an intimate, deeply-felt portrait of Polish theatrical legend Jerzy Grotowski. Grotowski (familiar to many given André Gregory's discussion of him in My Dinner with André) here teams up with a film crew and hearkens off to Nienadowka, Poland - the hamlet where he, his mother and his brother were concealed from the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation of Poland. The film finds Grotowski searching for mnemonic and sensorial associations from his childhood (that, in turn, fueled his art), then trekking off to his aunt's apartment in Rzeszow, where he breaks the fourth wall, addressing the audience one-on-one about the fundamentals of his theatrical work. Peter Brook narrates. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jerzy Grotowski
- 1978
The Chicago area boasts a large Eastern European population. This documentary is about the music and community of The Popovich Brothers, who work at blue-collar jobs by day and play Serbian ethnic music by night at churches, weddings and parties. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1976
The close friendship between a passionate old woman and a 12-year-old girl is presented in this drama. They meet when the girl is sent to her grandmother's house for the summer. It takes a while, but eventually the two become friends and the woman shares that she has been defying the cruel contractors who want her off the land so they can develop it. But the woman will not budge. Later she dies and her granddaughter continues her fight until she realizes that she cannot fight the future and lets them build. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gale Sondergaard, Suzanne Weber, (more)
- 1974
This documentary examines the fight initiated by the Shoshone Indians of Nevada to claim some twenty-four million acres of land ceded to them in an 1863 treaty with the Federal government. However, not content simply to ignore their treaty, the government gives in to pressure from local white cattle-ranchers and is shown destroying a pinyon pine forest that the Native Americans depended on for income; the ranchers wanted those public lands for grazing. Narrated by Robert Redford, the film illustrates the Shoshone way of life, including the impoverished living conditions of the tribe and the inner workings of the tribal government. Also seen is a confrontation between Indian activists and Federal agents and an interview with a Shoshone elder, 115 years old at the time, who recounts the steady destruction of his way of life. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Singer/songwriter Judy Collins and filmmaker Jill Godmilow were the creative forces behind Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman. This 58-minute documentary zeroes in on the life and work of symphony conductor Antonia Brico. The film traces Brico's struggle to overcome the "good old boy" sexual bias in her profession. Her uplifting story is enhanced tenfold by precious backstage footage of Brico in action. Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman was well distributed on the college campus circuit, then became a staple of arts-oriented cable TV services. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
