Available for Personal Appearances

Short Biography

MAUREEN GOSLING has been a documentary filmmaker for more than thirty years and is best known for her twenty-year collaboration with acclaimed independent director, Les Blank (Burden of Dreams, Always for Pleasure). Gosling has also been sought after as an editor, working with such directors as Jed Riffe (Waiting to Inhale, California’s “Lost” Tribes), Tom Weidlinger (Heart of the Congo, A Dream in Hanoi), Shakti Butler (The Way Home), Ashley James (Bomba: Dancing the Drum), Amie Williams (Stripped and Teased) and Pam Rorke Levy (The Mission District: The Hidden Neighborhoods of San Francisco). Her work has often focused on themes of people and their cultural values, music as cultural expression and the changing gender roles of men and women. Her films have been seen in countless film festivals around the world, on national public and cable television, on television in Europe, Australia and Asia, and have been distributed widely to educational institutions.

Gosling’s Blossoms of Fire, a feature documentary filmed and edited completely on 16mm, represents her debut as a Producer/Director. The film, distributed in the U.S. by New Yorker Films, is a celebratory tribute to the Isthmus Zapotec people of southern Oaxaca, Mexico. Blossoms of Fire has garnered rave reviews, charming audiences from San Diego to Marseille. Among its awards, the film won the Coral Award for Best Documentary by a Non-Latino Director about Latin America at the Havana International Film Festival. The film has also been broadcast on HBO Latino, Spanish, Swedish and Maori Television channels.

Gosling’s current projects in development as Director/Producer include No Mouse Music! The Story of Chris Strachwitz and Arhoolie Records (with Chris Simon) and Bamako Chic, Women Cloth Dyers of Mali (with Maxine Downs). Gosling's story of becoming a filmmaker is included in the book for junior high school girls, You Can Be a Woman Movie Maker, published by Cascade Pass. The book includes a 15-minute video on DVD entitled Maureen Gosling, Documentary Filmmaker.