In honor of Women’s History Month, GBH is celebrating women in the film industry with expert Maria Giese, writer, director and producer, and Micha Cooper-Edwards, CEO & Principal Producer of Soleil Entertainment . Whether you are a first-time screenwriter or well-known producer, connect with Maria at our next Ask The Expert event. Bring Maria all of your questions and learn tips on how you, too, can become a film producer. Please register in advance for this free virtual event.
Maria Giese is an American journalist, screenwriter and director. A member of the Directors Guild of America, Maria led the battle for gender equality in the film industry. In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis referred to her work as “a veritable crusade”. She is now the subject of three recent books and two award-winning feature documentaries: This Changes Everything (2019) and Half the Picture (2018). Her 2019 TEDx talk, The Battle for Female Voices in Entertainment Media, and her upcoming book, Troublemaker, describe her groundbreaking activism on behalf of women directors.
Maria Giese is currently co-producing the feature documentary Brainwashed: Sex and Power, the Visual Language of Cinema, and is attached to direct the feature documentary, Women On Wall Street, and the narrative feature film, Oliver Outloud— a story of a painter with Tourettes Syndrome. Prior to that, she wrote and directed the 1996 feature film When Saturday Comes starring Emily Lloyd, Sean Bean and Pete Postlethwaite, and the 2007 award-winning digital feature film Hunger based on the novel by Nobel Prize-winner Knut Hamsun. She has also directed two Golden Cine Eagle-winning short films, and has written three screenplays that have been produced into feature films. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Alliance of Women Directors, and founding chair of the Provincetown Women’s Media Summit. Giese holds a BA from Wellesley College and a Master’s degree from UCLA’s Graduate School of Theatre, Film and Television.
WIFVNE members may recall Maria Giese was our keynote speaker at our 2018 Annual Meeting of Members, held at GBH.
Micha Cooper-Edwards is a film and television producer with an ultimate vision to unite and empower the world’s diverse diasporas through the connective and enlightening power of media. Prior to her foray into film & TV production, Micha established a 15-year multinational marketing career leading global teams and brands, including NIKE, Brand Jordan, Diageo, Pepsico, Cadbury, Kraft and Moët-Hennessy. She could no longer stifle her desire to impact culture at a deeper level, leading to her creation of Soleil Entertainment, “a vehicle that taps into the power of media to elevate creative talent and stories from the Global South diasporas of Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East - cultures and parts of the world that are yet to be fully empowered, appreciated and understood.” Soleil produces film, TV, branded and podcast content, with a mission to create a global media landscape that is more equitable and representative of these cultures.
Prior to launching Soleil, Micha also served as Head of Marketing and Strategic Partnerships for CreativeChaos vmg, a NY-based production company where she led marketing, social impact campaigns, and corporate partnerships for the company’s titles including the critically acclaimed documentary This Changes Everything, directed by Tom Donahue and Executive Produced by Geena Davis about discrimination against women in Hollywood, and Impact Partners/HBO Documentaries co-production Bleed Out.
Alecia Orsini, President of Women in Film and Video New England, will be conducting the interview and moderating audience questions for this event.