Open Edition- Ron Mulvihill
Los Angeles, CA – Gris-Gris Films, a production and distribution entity specializing in films with special emphasis on African and indigenous women’s cultural wisdom is bringing the world closer together through its film library, now online, including its latest release Maasai Remix, a beautiful film of hope. The film has been gracing festivals, often virtually, in cities throughout the world during the bleak filled times of the pandemic this past year; boldly addressing women’s empowerment, black lives, environmental preservation, human rights and land rights. Maasai Remix won Best Feature Length Documentary – Dikalo (Message) Award recently at the Cannes Pan African Film Festival.
The company formed in 1994 and began with its production of the award-winning film Maanagamizi – The Ancient One, the first sub-Saharan African language film to compete in the Foreign Language Film category of the 74th Academy Awards (2001). Author of The Color Purple, Alice Walker penned the following tribute to the film, “Maangamizi – The Ancient One…is more than a movie. It is a look at how we’ve been torn at our roots; severed from nourishment at the source…Those of us who can remember and honor who we have been over eons of time, will be able to inspire thewhole world to greater heights of compassion.” Gris-Gris Films was established to offer worldwide audiences access to positive ‘good news’ stories from Africa and the world.
Via the company’s website: www.grisgrisfilms.net 40 years of wife and husband filmmaking team’s work can be viewed. African American writer/producer QueenaeTaylor Mulvihill, and producer/director/ethnographic filmmaker Ron Mulvihill who met at UCLA Film School during the ‘L.A. Rebellion’ years were influenced to write and produce films that contained socially relevant content that challenged existing Hollywood norms. After working in Hollywood for several years, they decided to venture down the independent filmmaking path to get their creative works to the screen and now streaming.
Gris-Gris Films ventured on two collaborations with the Tanzanian Film Company, and now both are streaming including Ron’s UCLA Thesis film, the award winning Arusi YaMariamu (The Marriage of Mariamu) a dramatic short, follows a woman’s healing story, shot in Healer Simba Mbili’s village in Tanzania and was the first East African film to win several awards including the OAU (Organization of African Unity) and Best Short Film awards at FESPACO’s premiere Pan African Film Festival of Burkina Faso, West Africa in 1985. A decade later Gris-Gris Films Co-produced with Martin Mhando and the Tanzanian Film Company, the feature film Maangamizi – The Ancient One, winner of many awards including the Best Feature Narrative Paul Robeson Award. Written by Queenae Taylor Mulvihill and adapted from her UCLA Thesis script. Maangmizi tells the story of three women – a doctor, her patient and the ancient and mysterious ancestor who brings them together. It is a tale of healing through love, compassion and forgiveness. A story that seeks to reclaim the connection between Africa and her Diaspora and dares to represent the histories of two continents as it peels away layers upon layers of pain and ultimately brings healing of the soul.
Gris-Gris Films teamed up with ethnomusicologist and professor of Anthropology and founding chair of the African Studies Department of the University of Michigan to coproduce three films. Starting with Poetry In Motion – 100 years of Zanzibar’s NadiIkhwan Safaa, a historical feature documentary about one of the longest standing orchestras in the world from Zanzibar, East Africa also highlighting the integration of the first woman joing the orchestra.
Gris-Gris Films also coproduced We Are Still Here – Katherine Siva Saubel and the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California, with producer/director Leigh Podgorski, a documentary on the first Cahuilla Tribal Chair-woman, elder and ‘keeper of the plants’, who preserved the Cahuilla language and catalogued the tribes healing and medicinal plants for her people and the world.
