Films by Filmmaker
Amie S. Williams
Amie founded her own film/video production company, BAL MAIDEN FILMS (Gaelic for women who worked in the mines), in 1991, at the dawn of the digital revolution, when the entire landscape of filmmaking was shifting. Taking advantage of these new technologies, Amie has built an innovative, integrated company that strives to tell stories about people and places that are part of this shift in consciousness. From labor unions to African womens micro-finance collectives, AIDS orphans to environmental truckers, BAL MAIDEN FILMS and the new non-profit group she co-founded, GLOBAL GIRL MEDIA Amie is interested in driving creative ideologies shaped for the unique challenges facing a world in constant flux. Specializing in activist/consciousness-raising videos for non-profits and grassroots groups, Bal Maiden Films client list includes SEIU, UNITEHERE, ILWU, Rotary International, Discovery Channel, PBS, BBC, Canadian TV, Current TV, Al Jazeera English and Kenya Television Nation. Never content to stay put when there is a rally, protest, election, or uprising to follow, Amie has been excavating stories from Siberia to Soweto, Tokyo to Nairobi, crossing borders, building bridges and pushing boundaries, as well as her art to activate dialogue and debate. In addition to her two films in New Day, UNCOMMON GROUND and FALLON, NV: DEADLY OASIS, she has produced and directed three additional feature documentaries, most recently NO SWEAT about American Apparel and SweatX two sweatshop-free T-shirt manufacturers in downtown Los Angeles. NO SWEAT recently broadcast as part of KQED's Truly CA documentary series, Sept. 2005.
Her other films include: ONE DAY LONGER: THE STORY OF THE FRONTIER STRIKE (2003); about of the longest running strikes in US HIstory on the Las Vegas Strip, and STRIPPED AND TEASED: TALES FROM LAS VEGAS WOMEN 2002. She also produced: VIEW THROUGH A GRAIN OF SAND, about women refugees in Afghanistan, also a New Day title, directed by Meena Nanji, and just finished work for Al jazeera English TV on two projects for their WITNESS Documentary series, THE PROBLEM OF PEACE, about the recent post-election violence in Kenya, and VOICES OF THE HEART, about a language immersion school on the Wind River Northern Arapaho Reservation in Wyoming. Both of these films can be seen at www.aljazeeraenglish.net/witness Her films have won numerous awards, such as the International Documentary Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Media Grant, the SONY/Streisand Award for emerging female filmmakers, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Peace Grant, the A.F.I. Independent Film and Videomakers Award, and a National Arts Council grant to tour Japan to show her work. Amie has more recently forayed into screenwriting, developing stories from her documentary background into narrative feature films. Her first feature-length script is set in present-day Kenya, JUA KALI (HARSH SUN) and was recently selected to participate in the 2007 Film Independent Director's Lab, with Amie attached as Director, produced by Trish Dolman in Canada, Screen Siren Pictures (Flower and Garnet), Tracey Nicole Bing, formerly of Warner Independent Pictures (March of the Penguins) with Jim Denault attached as the Cinematographer (Maria Full of Grace, Boys Don't Cry), and the actor Idris Elba attached to play a lead role (The Wire, Daddy's Little Girl, The Reaping, Sometimes in April).
Amie graduated from Yale University (B.A., English and Theater, 1985); and U.C.L.A (MFA, Film, 1992).
