James Spione

Last updated

James Spione
Born
James Michael Spione

United States
Occupation(s)Film director, producer, writer

James Michael Spione is an American director, producer, writer and editor of both documentary and fiction films. Early on in his career, he developed a reputation for suspenseful dramatic shorts; his later career, however, has been marked by a new focus on short and feature-length documentaries for both theatrical release and public television broadcast. [1]

Contents

His film, Incident in New Baghdad , was nominated in the Documentary Short Subject category of the 84th Academy Awards. [2]

Life and career

Born in the Hudson Valley region of New York State, Spione graduated with Honors in 1985 from the Film Directing program at the State University of New York at Purchase. [3] He first achieved national recognition in 1987, when he received a Student Academy Award for his dramatic thesis film Prelude, about an adolescent boy's solo journey into the Adirondack Mountains. [4] In 2018, the film was digitally restored by the Academy for inclusion in its Short Film Archives. [5]

During the 1990s, Spione wrote and directed several other notable dramatic shorts, including Garden (1994), which starred fellow SUNY alumni Melissa Leo (2010 Best Supporting Actress winner for The Fighter ) and Matt Malloy ( Six Feet Under ). An eerie period drama about a disturbed father's homecoming, Garden was featured in the Shorts Program at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival and played at numerous other national and international film festivals. [6]

Spione next wrote and directed The Playroom (1996), starring Pamela Holden Stewart ( The Reception ), which was shown at the Walter Reade Theatre in New York City as part of the "Independents Night" series and broadcast on the national cable program "Reel Street." [7] Spione also produced and co-edited John G. Young's first feature, Parallel Sons , which premiered at Sundance in the Dramatic Competition and was later distributed by Strand Releasing. [8]

During the 2000s, Spione began to produce and direct nonfiction films. In 2005, he made American Farm, a feature-length documentary that focused on the predicament of his family's 5th-generation dairy farm in central New York State. The film premiered at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and went on to play theatres from the Berkshires to the Midwest. [9] Spione often toured with the movie and would hold frequent Q&A sessions at each regional premiere to engage the audience directly in discussions about the state of family farming in America. [10]

In 2008, Spione collaborated with The Barrier Islands Center in Machipongo, Virginia on a historical documentary, Our Island Home, about the last surviving residents of a vanished settlement on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Our Island Home premiered at the Barrier Islands Center and was subsequently broadcast by WHRO-TV in Norfolk, Virginia.11 Like American Farm, Spione released the DVD version of the movie through his own production and distribution company, Morninglight Films. Over the ensuing years, Spione has returned to the area numerous times, working with the Center to create a series of shorts about the unique history and culture of the region, including "Spirit of the Bird" (2012), "Watermen" (2014), "The Last Hunt Clubs" (2016), "Welcome to the Table" (2018), "Gatherings" (2020), "Island Empire: The Story of the Cobbs" (2022) and "The Almshouse" (2024). [11]

Released in 2010 was Inauguration, a verite documentary concerning the events on the streets of Washington, D.C. leading up to the swearing-in of Barack Obama. [12]

Spione's 2011 Oscar-nominated film Incident in New Baghdad was a first-person account of the infamous July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike that killed two Reuters journalists, along with about a dozen other mostly unarmed individuals, in a suburb of Baghdad during one of the most violent and chaotic periods of the Iraq War.1 The film premiered theatrically at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, where it won the prize for Best Short Documentary. [13]

The director next completed a feature documentary called Silenced, about the Obama Administration's crackdown on U.S. national security whistleblowers including Thomas Andrews Drake and John Kiriakou. [14] The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2014. [15] Silenced was broadcast nationally on the DirecTV Audience Channel in 2015, and nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy Award in the Outstanding Informational Long-Form Program category. [16]

Spione's most recent feature is 2017's Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock, a collaborative work about the historic indigenous resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline project near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. The film was produced in partnership with directors Josh Fox and Myron Dewey, producer Doug Good Feather and writer Floris White Bull. The film premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. [17]

Concurrent with his film directing career, Spione often worked as a film and video editor on independent dramatic and documentary features (Darien Sills-Evans' X-Patriots, Spencer Mandell and Raymond Pagnucco's God's Open Hand), as well as numerous award-winning videos for national educational producer Human Relations Media.

He is currently making a new documentary about the civil rights-era photographer John Shearer. [18]

Praise and criticism

Among his short works, Garden received high praise from critics during the movie's film festival tour. Lawrence Toppman wrote in the Charlotte Observer that "James Spione creates more tension in 25 minutes than most writer-directors manage over two hours," and the film was Toppman's most recommended of the 1994 Charlotte Film Festival. [19] Critic Greg Stacy of the Orange County Weekly called Garden a "real gem" with "the crushing inevitability of a Flannery O'Connor story." [20] Reaction to Spione's later documentary work, however, has been somewhat more mixed. While American Farm was generally well received in newspapers such as the Wisconsin State Journal and the Burlington Free Press , at least one review by The A.V. Club was quite critical. [21] [22] [23] Nonetheless, the DVD version of the movie was selected by Video Librarian magazine as one of the Best Documentaries of 2008. [24] More recently, Incident in New Baghdad was described by critics as "truly not worth missing" and "one powerful and disturbing film." [25] [26]

Filmography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Plympton</span> American illustrator, animator, and film director

Bill Plympton is an American animator, graphic designer, cartoonist, and filmmaker best known for his 1987 Academy Awards-nominated animated short Your Face and his series of shorts featuring a dog character starting with 2004's Guard Dog.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ondi Timoner</span> American film director

Ondi Doane Timoner is an American filmmaker and the founder and chief executive officer of Interloper Films, a production company located in Pasadena, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marshall Curry</span> American film director (born 1970)

Marshall Curry is an Oscar-winning American documentary director, producer, cinematographer and editor. His films include Street Fight, Racing Dreams, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, Point and Shoot, and A Night at the Garden. His first fiction film was the Academy Award-winning short film The Neighbors' Window (2019).

<i>The Boys from Baghdad High</i> 2007 British-American-French television documentary film

The Boys from Baghdad High, also known as Baghdad High, is a British-American-French television documentary film. It was first shown in the United Kingdom at the 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest, before airing on BBC Two on 8 January 2008. It also aired in many other countries including France, Australia, the United States, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands. It documents the lives of four Iraqi schoolboys of different religious or ethnic backgrounds over the course of one year in the form of a video diary. The documentary was filmed by the boys themselves, who were given video cameras for the project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Guttentag</span> American film director

Bill Guttentag is an American dramatic and documentary film writer-producer-director. His films have premiered at the Sundance, Cannes, Telluride and Tribeca film festivals, and he has won two Academy Awards.

Tony Gerber is an American filmmaker and the co-founder of Market Road Films, an independent production company.

<i>Incident in New Baghdad</i> American film

Incident in New Baghdad is a 2011 short documentary film about the July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike, directed by James Spione.

Malika Zouhali-Worrall is a British-Moroccan film director and editor.

Michèle Ohayon is a film director, screenwriter and producer, best known for the Academy Award-nominated feature documentary film, Colors Straight Up (1997), Cowboy del Amor (2005), Steal a Pencil for Me (2007) and Cristina (2016).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Niall McKay</span> Irish writer, director and film curator

Niall McKay is an Irish writer, Emmy-winning director and film curator. He’s the writer/director of a New York based comedy series called On the Lig, a shorts programmer for the Tribeca Film Festival and curator of Irish Screen America, an Irish film festival held at USC in Los Angeles and NYU in New York. McKay is also co-founder of the production company Media Factory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim A. Snyder</span> American filmmaker and producer

Kim A. Snyder is an American filmmaker and producer. Previously, she spent some time contributing to Variety.

<i>Earthrise</i> (film) American film

Earthrise is a 2018 documentary by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee. The film tells the story of the first image captured of the Earth from space in 1968, as recalled by the Apollo 8 astronauts. The film premiered at Tribeca Film Festival on April 21, 2018 and had its online premiere on the New York Times Op-Docs and the PBS Series, POV, on October 2, 2018. In 2018, it won the Audience Award at AFI DOCS and won Best Documentary Short at Raindance Film Festival. After airing on PBS, it was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Short Documentary at the 40th News and Documentary Emmy Award.

<i>The Neighbors Window</i> 2019 American short film by Marshall Curry

The Neighbors' Window is a 2019 American short film written and directed by Marshall Curry. It won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2020. The film was inspired by a true story by Diane Weipert, which she recounted on the podcast Love and Radio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Aharoni</span> American film director and producer

Scott Aharoni is an American film producer and director. He is a co-Founder of Cinegryphon Entertainment, an American independent entertainment company specializing in film and television development, production and financing.

Elvira Lind is a Danish film director based in New York City.

Frederike Migom, is a Belgian actress, screenwriter and director. She is best known for the award-winning films Binti, Nkosi coiffure and Malakim.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Zimbalist</span> American filmmaker

Michael Zimbalist is an American filmmaker. He is a three-time Emmy Award and a Peabody Awards winner.

Jefferson Stein

Jefferson Stein is an American filmmaker. He is best known for his 2021 film Burros, executive produced by Eva Longoria, which premiered at the 20th Annual Tribeca Film Festival and won the Jury Award in the Live Action Short category at the 25th Annual New York International Children's Film Festival, where it qualified for the 95th Annual Academy Awards.

<i>Heart Valley</i> Short documentary film

Heart Valley is a 2022 short documentary film about Welsh shepherd Wilf Davies. Directed and produced by filmmaker Christian Cargill, the film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 9, 2022 where it won the award for Best Documentary Short. It first broadcast in the UK on BBC Two Wales and BBC iPlayer on July 26, 2022 and released online with The New Yorker on December 2, 2022. The documentary won the BAFTA Cymru Award 2023 for Best Short Film and was nominated for The Grierson Award 2023 for Best Documentary Short. The Hollywood Reporter named Heart Valley as one of their Top 23 Short Documentaries of 2022 and it was one of 98 films to qualify for the 95th Academy Awards for Best Documentary Short.

Robert C. Profusek is an Emmy-nominated American filmmaker, producer, entertainment executive, and entrepreneur, best known for Kusama: Infinity (2018), The Girl Is in Trouble (2015) and Holy Rollers (2010).

References

  1. ↑ "Our Island Home/Biographies". Morninglight Films. Retrieved February 12, 2010.
  2. ↑ "Nominees for the 84th Academy Awards". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved January 27, 2012.
  3. ↑ Lanzetta, Danny (April 14, 2005). "An ideal 'Farm'" (PDF). Pulse Magazine. Poughkeepsie, New York. p. 25. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 20, 2008.
  4. ↑ "Student Academy Award Winners". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved February 12, 2010.
  5. ↑ "IMDb Biography". IMDb. Retrieved February 17, 2024.
  6. ↑ "IMDb Biography". IMDb. Retrieved February 17, 2024.
  7. ↑ "American Farm/The Filmmakers". Morninglight Films. Retrieved February 12, 2010.
  8. ↑ "Parallel Sons (1995)". IMDb. Retrieved January 30, 2020.
  9. ↑ Hallenbeck, Brent (December 4, 2007). "Focus on Farms' Families". Burlington Free Press. Vermont.
  10. ↑ "Upstate Films/Guest Speakers". Upstate Films. Retrieved February 1, 2010.
  11. ↑ "James Spione - Biography". IMDb. Retrieved February 17, 2024.
  12. ↑ "Inauguration: Spirit of the Crowd". Morninglight Films. Archived from the original on February 1, 2011. Retrieved February 16, 2010.
  13. ↑ "Awards_Announced_2011_Tribeca_Film_Festival". Tribeca Film Festival. Archived from the original on November 14, 2012. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  14. ↑ "Silenced". Morninglight Films. Retrieved October 28, 2013.
  15. ↑ "Silenced/Tribeca Film Festival 2014". Tribeca Enterprises LLC. Retrieved March 29, 2014.
  16. ↑ ""Life Itself," "Bolshoi" among News and Doc Emmy noms". Brunico Communications Ltd. Retrieved July 23, 2016.
  17. ↑ "Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock". International WOW. Retrieved April 18, 2019.
  18. ↑ Seelye, Katharine Q. (June 27, 2019). "John Shearer, Who Photographed Tumultuous 1960s, Dies at 72". New York Times. Retrieved June 27, 2019.
  19. ↑ Toppman, Lawrence (May 13, 1994). "Critic's picks of films, videos to see at festival". Charlotte Observer, p. 2F.
  20. ↑ Stacy, Greg (August 16–22, 1996). "Short Cuts". OC Weekly, p. 23.
  21. ↑ Thomas, Rob (October 6, 2005). ""American Farm" Skips the Country Cliches". Wisconsin State Journal. Madison. Retrieved August 17, 2017.
  22. ↑ Hallenbeck, Brent (December 4, 2007). "Focus on Farms' Families". Burlington Free Press. Vermont.
  23. ↑ Murray, Noel (October 5, 2005). "American Farm". The A.V. Club . Madison.
  24. ↑ "Video Librarian 2008 Best Documentaries". Video Librarian. Retrieved March 1, 2010.
  25. ↑ "A Guide to the Tribeca_Film_Festival's Best Short Films". ArtInfo. April 22, 2011. Retrieved August 17, 2017.
  26. ↑ "Surveying the Docs at Tribeca". Filmmaker Magazine . April 29, 2011. Retrieved July 13, 2011.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.