Jill Godmilow

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Jill Godmilow c. 2003 Jill Godmilow.jpg
Jill Godmilow c. 2003

Jill Godmilow (born Joan Godmilow; November 23, 1943) is an American independent filmmaker, primarily of non-fiction works, and an advocate for Post-Realism in documentary. She is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame. [1] [2] Godmilow is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. [3]

Contents

Early life

Born Joan Godmilow near Philadelphia, the younger daughter of Herbert and Beatrice (Schlaifman) Godmilow, [4] she studied Russian literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating in 1965. [5]

Career

Godmilow's 1974 film with collaborator Judy Collins, Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman , about female conductor Antonia Brico, received a nomination for Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature,[ citation needed ] and in 2003 was selected for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. [6] In 1984, she made Far From Poland, [7] a non-fiction feature about contradictions in the Polish Solidarity movement, filmed entirely in the U.S. It was heralded for breaking new ground in the documentary genre. [8]

Her 1987 feature film Waiting for the Moon is a biography of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, played by actresses Linda Hunt and Linda Bassett. It was produced for PBS's American Playhouse series, released theatrically by Skouras Pictures, and won Best Feature Film at the Sundance Film Festival in 1987. [9] In 1998, What Farocki Taught premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film is a replica, in color and in English, of Harun Farocki's 1969 black and white German language film Inextinguishable Fire, [10] [11] on the production of napalm at Dow Chemical Company. Her film was featured in the 2000 Whitney Biennial. [3]

In 2022, she published Kill the Documentary: A Letter to Filmmakers, Students, and Scholars, published by Columbia University Press, which the author prefers to call "a manifesto". [12]

See also

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References

  1. "The Bio (Jill Godmilow)". University of Notre Dame .
  2. "The Films of Jill Godmilow". University of Notre Dame .
  3. 1 2 "Jill Godmilow". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation . Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  4. Obituary: Beatrice (Schlaifman) Godmilow, obits.goldsteinsfuneral.com. Accessed January 23, 2025.
  5. Biography, nytimes.com. Accessed October 31, 2024.
  6. "National Film Registry Titles Selected 1989–2017, Listed Alphabetically" (PDF). National Film Registry . Library of Congress.
  7. Holden, Stephen (October 3, 1984). "Far from Poland". The New York Times . Retrieved 14 October 2019.
  8. Patterson, Wendy (November 7, 1986). "Far from Documentary: An Interview with Jill Godmilow". Afterimage. 13 (7): 4–7. doi:10.1525/aft.1986.13.7.4.
  9. Goodman, Walter (March 6, 1987). "Film: 'Waiting for Moon'". The New York Times .
  10. "Harun Farocki: Inextinguishable Fire 1969". Museum of Modern Art . 2016–2017. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  11. Breitbart, Eric (1998). "Reviewed Work: What Farocki Taught by Film Godmilow". Cineaste. 23 (4): 51.
  12. "Kill the Documentary: A Letter to Filmmakers, Students, and Scholars: Jill Godmilow's Manifesto Takes on the Nonfiction Form", documentary.org. Accessed October 31, 2024.