Talent Guide

Amie Williams

  • Discipline:Director, Writer
  • Program Year:Directing Lab 2007, Fast Track 2007

Bio

Amie Williams is an accomplished documentary filmmaker. She is the Executive Director of the non-profit film/video production company Bal Maiden Films/Global Girl Media, based in Los Angeles, which produces films for grassroots and non-profit organizations and recently began a global training program for teenage girls in developing countries, encouraging them to use new media for social change.

Her first screenplay, Jua Kali (Harsh Sun), was selected to be part of Film Independent’s 2007 Director’s Lab, and the Fast Track program at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival. Last fall the project was selected for IFP’s No Borders Co-financing Market. Attached as DP is Jim Denault (Boys Don’t Cry, Maria Full of Grace), and actor Idris Elba (American Gangster, Daddy’s Little Girl, Sometimes in April). it recently was one of five Finalists (out of 2,000 scripts) in Filmmaker’s Alliance Ultimate Filmmaker’s Contest.

Williams recently finished a short documentary for Al Jazeera’s WITNESS series on Global Girl Media’s project in Soweto, South Africa where 20 teenage girls reported on the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Past films include No Sweat (2006), about bad-boy clothing manufacturer American Apparel, which premiered at the AFI Film Festival and was chosen to be part of the 20/20 Program, pairing US filmmakers with foreign directors on tour with their films, sponsored by NEH, AFI and the US State Department; Fallon, NV: Deadly Oasis (2004) about a childhood leukemia cluster, an ITVS funded film broadcast on PBS; Stripped and Teased: Tales from Las Vegas Women (2001); One Day Longer: The Story of the Frontier Strike (2002); and Uncommon Ground: From Los Angeles to South Africa (1994). These films have won numerous awards, including the International Documentary Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Media Grant, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Peace Grant, among many others.

Current Project

Jua Kali (Narrative Feature)

Logline

Grace, a headstrong, sixteen-year old Kenyan girl loses both parents to AIDS and is forced to drop out of school. Refusing to destroy her dream to get an education, she learns to recycle a life with other AIDS orphans in the throw away corners of society, where refuse becomes another word for shelter, family, even redemption.