George T. Nierenberg is a New York-based documentary filmmaker and creator of GTN Creative.
His 1975 film The Hollow is a documentary about a family in the Adirondacks. [1]
His 1979 Emmy award winning film "No Maps on My Taps" explored American tap dance and has been credited as bringing about a revival to the form. Following the success of the film, famous featured tap dancers began the "No Maps on My Taps and Company" tour around the world, performing at over 60 locations. Again documenting the culture around tap dance, Nierenberg made "About Tap", featuring Gregory Hines and stylistic performances and recollections by three of America’s leading male tap dancers: Steve Condos, Jimmy Slyde and Chuck Green. For his contribution to the form, Nierenberg was awarded in 2014 the American Tap Dance Foundation's Tap Preservation Award, given to an outstanding individual or organization in the field for the superior advancement of tap dance through presentation and preservation. [2] [3]
His 1982 film Say Amen Somebody! documents gospel music and New York Magazine placed it at number 31 on their list of the 50 Best Documentaries of All Time in 2019. [4] [5] [6] In "That Rhythm, Those Blues" (1988), Nierenberg celebrated R&B and laid bare the racism in the music industry of the 1950s, for which Nierenberg was nominated for a Best Director Emmy. Milestone Films restored and re-released "Say Amen, Somebody" and "No Maps on My Taps" theatrically to acclaim in 2017. [7]
Working in television, Nierenberg produced, directed and developed projects for PBS, AMC, Bravo, Nickelodeon, and Sony BMG, including: Neon Lights, for National Geographic’s Explorer and a film on Voodoo in Haiti for ABC’s Day One. In 1983, Nierenberg made "Moment of Crisis" about the JFK assassination for NBC. [8] Nierenberg was enlisted as a producer to launch Saturday Night with Connie Chung on CBS. [9]
George Nierenberg is an acclaimed filmmaker whose career has spanned the worlds of independent features, network, cable and international television, and corporate videos. His work has been released by MGM/UA, has appeared on CBS, ABC, Bravo, BCC, and has earned numerous illustrious honors, establishing him as a producer/director with a knack both for managing complex productions and for bringing his subjects to life. He is known for his ability to create visually strong stories that bring out the humanity in their subjects and reach audiences on an emotional level. [3] [10]
Speaking on his work, Nierenberg said, "The camera helps you see what you see, but as the director I help you feel what I feel." [11]
Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sounds of tap shoes striking the floor as a form of percussion. Two major variations on tap dance exist: rhythm (jazz) tap and Broadway tap. Broadway tap focuses on dance; it is widely performed in musical theater. Rhythm tap focuses on musicality, and practitioners consider themselves to be a part of the jazz tradition.
Constance Yu-Hwa Chung is an American journalist who has been a news anchor and reporter for the U.S. television news networks ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC. Some of her more famous interview subjects include Claus von Bülow and U.S. representative Gary Condit, whom Chung interviewed first after the Chandra Levy disappearance, and basketball legend Magic Johnson after he went public about being HIV-positive. In 1993, she became the second woman to co-anchor a network newscast as part of CBS Evening News.
Savion Glover is an American tap dancer, actor, and choreographer.
Willie Mae Ford Smith was an American musician and Christian evangelist instrumental in the development and spread of gospel music in the United States. She grew up singing with her family, joining a quartet with her sisters. Later she became acquainted with Thomas A. Dorsey, the "Father of Gospel Music", when he co-founded the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses in 1932. Smith started the St. Louis chapter and became the director of the national organization's Soloist's Bureau, training up and coming singers in the gospel blues style. She became known for her nurturing temperament, leading to her commonly being called "Mother Smith" by those within her musical circle. For a decade she traveled ceaselessly tutoring, singing, and preaching in churches and at revivals. Her appearances were renowned for being intensely moving spiritual experiences.
John Cohen was an American musician, photographer and film maker who performed and documented the traditional music of the rural South and played a major role in the American folk music revival. In the 1950s and 60s, Cohen was a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, a New York–based string band. Cohen made several expeditions to Peru to film and record the traditional culture of the Q'ero, an indigenous people. Cohen was also a professor of visual arts at SUNY Purchase College for 25 years.
Connie Britton is an American actress. Britton made her feature film debut in the independent comedy-drama film The Brothers McMullen (1995), and the following year, she was cast as Nikki Faber on the ABC sitcom Spin City. She later starred in the short-lived sitcoms The Fighting Fitzgeralds (2001) and Lost at Home (2003), and appeared in several films, most notably the sports drama film Friday Night Lights (2004) and the thriller film The Last Winter (2006).
Charles “Honi” Coles was an American actor and tap dancer, who was inducted posthumously into the American Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2003. He had a distinctive personal style that required technical precision, high-speed tapping, and a close-to-the-floor style where "the legs and feet did the work". Coles was also half of the professional tap dancing duo Coles and Atkins, whose specialty was performing with elegant style through various tap steps such as "swing dance", "over the top", "bebop", "buck and wing", and "slow drag".
"Take My Hand, Precious Lord" is a gospel song. The lyrics were written by Thomas A. Dorsey, who also adapted the melody.
Richard Warren Schickel was an American film historian, journalist, author, documentarian, and film and literary critic. He was a film critic for Time magazine from 1965–2010, and also wrote for Life magazine and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. His last writings about film were for Truthdig.
Howard "Sandman" Sims was an African-American tap dancer who began his career in vaudeville. He was skilled in a style of dancing that he performed in a wooden sandbox of his own construction, and acquired his nickname from the sand he sprinkled to alter and amplify the sound of his dance steps. "They called the board my Stradivarius," Sims said of his sandbox.
Charles Green was an American tap dancer. Green was born in Fitzgerald, Georgia. He would stick bottle caps on his bare feet as a child and tap dance on the sidewalk for money. He won third place in a dance contest in 1925, in which Noble Sissle was the bandleader. Soon, Green would be touring the South tap dancing.
Lynn Rogoff is an American film and television producer, playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, and academic. She is best known for writing the 1979 Emmy Award winning documentary film No Maps on My Taps and the 1983 play Love, Ben Love, Emma; the latter of which examines the correspondence between Emma Goldman and Ben Reitman. She is an associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology.
My Kid Could Paint That is a 2007 documentary film by director Amir Bar-Lev. The movie follows the early artistic career of Marla Olmstead, a young girl from Binghamton, New York who gains fame first as a child prodigy painter of abstract art, and then becomes the subject of controversy concerning whether she truly completed the paintings herself or did so with her parents' assistance and/or direction. The film was bought by Sony Pictures Classics in 2007 after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.
Hal Gessner is an American television producer. He was the senior producer and director for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He was a producer on Face To Face with Connie Chung, Street Stories with Ed Bradley and Day One before becoming the executive producer of the Saturday edition of The Early Show on CBS from 1997 to 2002. Gessner is the creator of the Chef on a Shoestring segment which was turned into a best-selling cookbook.
"If My Pillow Could Talk" was written by Jimmy Steward, Jr. of the Ravens and Bob Mosley, and was a hit single for Connie Francis.
Folkstreams is a non-profit organization that aims to collect and make available online documentary films about American folk art and culture.
Zella Jackson Price is an American gospel singer whose career has spanned 50 years. She performed with many St. Louis-based entertainers and earned national recognition, performing in her own show at Carnegie Hall in 1985. She was one of the pioneer black announcers on St. Louis radio and was the feature of a documentary about her life created by Chicago TV channel 28. She sang in several movies, including Say Amen, Somebody (1982), a documentary about Willie Mae Ford Smith' life, and the HBO mini-series Angels in America.
Anthony Joseph De Nonno is an Italian-American filmmaker, photographer, puppeteer, historian, and speaker in humanities.
No Maps on My Taps is a 1979 American documentary film directed by George Nierenberg. The film recounts the history of tap dancing in America through the lives of three influential tap dancers, Chuck Green, Howard Sims, and Bunny Briggs, and showcases their dancing skills in a historic live performance at Smalls Paradise nightclub in Harlem.
Say Amen, Somebody is a 1982 documentary film directed by George Nierenberg about the history and significance of gospel music as told through the lives and trials of its singers. Included are Thomas A. Dorsey, considered the "Father of Gospel Music", and "Mother" Willie Mae Ford Smith, an associate of Dorsey's who trained gospel singers for decades. Ford and three singing acts – Delois Barrett Campbell and the Barrett Sisters, Zella Jackson Price, and the O'Neal Twins, Edgar and Edward, backed by a choir – provide music throughout.