Available for Personal Appearances 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. Gosling has also been sought after as an editor, working with such directors as Tom Weidlinger, Jed Riffe, Shakti Butler, Amie Williams, Ashley James and Pam Rorke Levy. 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 is a celebratory tribute to the Isthmus Zapotec people of southern Oaxaca, Mexico. Blossoms of Fire, an Intrépidas Productions release, has garnered rave reviews, charming audiences from San Diego to Marseille. The film won the coveted 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. Gosling's latest work has been editing two films for director Jed Riffe, known for the feature documentary, Ishi the Last Yahi. Waiting to Inhale, 74 min., provides an in-depth look at the controversial issues surrounding efforts to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. California's "Lost" Tribes is the first part of a four-part public television series entitled California and the American Dream broadcast on PBS in April 2006. California's "Lost Tribes" illuminates the dramatic changes in the lives of California Indians since their economic foray into gaming and casinos. Gosling's story of becoming a filmmaker is included in the brand new 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. Along with Brazos Films' producer Chris Strachwitz, Gosling recently co-produced two DVD re-releases of Strachwitz and Les Blank's J'ai été au Bal: I Went to the Dance, the Roots of Cajun and Zydeco Music and Chulas Fronteras, the Roots of Tex Mex, which include new "Bonus Footage." Gosling edited three films directed by Tom Weidlinger: Heart of Congo, a new one-hour film on the challenges faced by a health aid organization working in Congo; Boys Will Be Men, a one-hour film on the socialization of boys in the United States, broadcast on public television; and A Dream in Hanoi, on a unique US-Vietnamese production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Vietnam. In the spring of 2002, Gosling and Weidlinger screened A Dream in Hanoi to enthusiastic audiences in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In the fall of 2002, she edited Fallon: Deadly Oasis, directed by Amie Williams, on the town of Fallon, Nevada, which has been suffering a rash of childhood leukemia cases. The film follows the families and the community as they seek to discover the cause. Gosling edited Bomba, Dancing the Drum, one hour, on the Afro-Puerto Rican music and dance tradition called bomba and the legendary Cepeda family. Bomba will air on PBS later this year and won the Jean Rouch Prize for Best Documentary Music Film at the Bilan du Film Ethnographique in Paris. Gosling also edited The Way Home, a 90-minute video on eight different ethnic groups of women telling of their experiences and thoughts on racism in the U.S. The Way Home, part of a national program of public dialogue spearheaded by Shakti Butler, has been an invaluable tool for educational groups and organizations dealing with issues of race and gender. Previously Gosling was a partner in Flower Films with prolific independent director, Les Blank, as co-filmmaker on a dozen of the twenty 16mm films they made together. She was editor and/or sound recordist on such films as Routes of Rhythm, with Harry Belafonte (on Cuban music in Cuba and New York), a three-part series broadcast nationwide on P.B.S.; Del Mero Corazón, on the lyrical song tradition of Texas-Mexican border music, which in 1976 ignited Gosling’s interest in Latino culture; and Burden of Dreams (on the tribulations of German director Werner Herzog shooting his feature Fitzcarraldo in the Peruvian Amazon). Burden of Dreams, the team’s best known film, received a British Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1983, was broadcast nationwide on P.B.S. and was on 12 U.S. critics’ Top Ten List of the Best Films of 1982. Gosling was nominated for Best Editing by The American Cinema Editors for Burden of Dreams. Gosling and Blank were sponsored by the United States Information Agency in 1983 to tour ten Latin American countries in two months with ten of their films, holding seminars, screening their films and meeting local filmmakers. They were also invited on a one-week filmmakers’ tour of Nicaragua in 1986. In 1984 Blank produced the Burden of Dreams Book in which Gosling’s 74 photographs and 100-page journal were published along with Les Blank’s diary, a transcript of the film and Herzog’s letters to his investors. Gosling’s films with Les Blank have been shown: On Television National and local PBS in the United States, as well as BRAVO, the Learning Channel and The Discovery Channel cable stations. The BBC and Channel 4 in Britain have broadcast all of the films. Most of the films have been aired in Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Finland, France, Korea, Australia, China, the Netherlands. In the Following Retrospectives 1995 Tribute at the San Francisco International Film Festival. 1992 Monica Theatre, Santa Monica, California; Vienna Film Festival, Austria. 1991 Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California. 1990 Augsberg Independent Film Days, Augsberg, Germany. 1989 Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California. 1986 Cinemathèque Française, Paris. 1985 Univ. of California, Los Angeles; Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. 1984 Honolulu Academy of Arts; Cineteca Nacional, Mexico City. 1983 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; University of Kansas; Cinemateca Uruguayo, Montevideo; Cinemateca Nacional, Quito, Ecuador; Cineteca Distrital, Bogotá, Colombia 1979 Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art In 1996 Gosling was an Editing Instructor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University, Fall Semester. She taught Editing and Filmmaking workshops at Film Arts Foundation and the Independent Feature Project in 1998, 1992 and 1990. She served on the Board of Cine Acción, a Latino film organization from 1996-2002. She received a BA in Social Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1972. GO TO TOP