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Marie
Regan grew up on a lagoon near San Francisco
where, at 13, she made her first film,
a documentary about the Special Olympics.
After an experience as an exchange
student in high school in Thailand, she
was moved to put the camera down and pursue
a degree in Humanities and International
Relations at Georgetown University. The
next few years found her working in a
London African literature publishing house,
assisting in a Calcutta street clinic,
teaching English to government ministers
in Spain, making photographs in post-Ceaucescu
Romania, and shooting digital video off
the back of a motorbike in Cambodia and
Vietnam.
A
twist of fate came to Marie in 1993 when
she seriously injured her hands. She had
been focusing on short stories and photography
at the time and “the months of pain really
made me cut to the chase in choosing the
art form in which I knew I was supposed
to work,” she recalls. Immediately returning
to film, Marie took a course in fine art
filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute,
and joined Francis Ford Coppola's American
Zoetrope.
It
was the three years at the Zoetrope where
Marie truly learned the nuts and bolts
of being a director. “ I never really
had a craving for Hollywood or show business,
but this helped me feel much more adequate
to the process,” she remembers.
“It wasn't particularly glamorous, but
I loved watching dailies and going through
the sound effects rolls from earlier films.
Francis and Eleanor Coppola were supportive
of the young people there going off to
do their own work.”
She moved to New York in 1997 and enrolled
in Columbia University's graduate program
in filmmaking. Marie garnered much praise
for her graduate thesis short film, Traveler,
and graduated with honors in directing
in early 2003.
Traveler
, the story of a 92-year-old woman
who takes to the road with a teenage driver
after her own license is revoked, earned
one of the NBR Student Awards and a number
of other prizes. “Although many people
describe Traveler as a film about
old age, I was thinking about American
bureaucracy and what it takes to feel
one is entitled to the life she or he
wants.” Traveler has been screened
in over 18 film festivals throughout the
country and internationally. It
has also appeared on the Sundance Channel
and Japanese Cable TV.
While
in Brazil with Traveler, as one
of the five US short directors invited
to the Sao Paulo International Short Film
Festival, Marie directed another short.
Her experimental Passion Fruit
was co-directed with Carlos Dowling
and appeared on Brazilian Television.
Marie
was recently awarded a fellowship from
the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire,
which she attended in November and December
of last year. Established in 1907,
the Colony's mission is to provide an
environment in which creative artists
are free to pursue their work without
interruption. Each year, over 200 writers,
composers, photographers, printmakers,
filmmakers, architects, and those collaborating
on creative works come from all over the
US and abroad. For Marie, it was an amazing
experience that pushed her work in new
directions. “ I went to MacDowell
to finish a feature script. But
when I arrived, I was given a huge, almost
barren, painting studio. In the
all-white environment, facing a blank
page, I began to crave color and movement
– as a result I started editing
some experimental video work I had shot
that fall. I was also tremendously
inspired by the other artists in residence.
It was the first time in my life
that I felt like I was part of a rigorous
artistic community.”
Currently
in New York, Marie works professionally
on narrative, documentary and music video
projects. She also does private
script consultation and teaches at Columbia
University and Barnard College
“Although I primarily enrolled at CU to
direct films, I knew I wanted to teach
as well. I love the discipline
of teaching – the intellectual challenge
of continuing to bring new insight to
the texts read or shown, but also the
sensitivity to students. My skills
as a director – being sensitive
to what is clicking with your actors or
crew and being a storyteller -- make me
a better teacher.”
This
summer you can find Marie in Flatbush,
Brooklyn, working on completing a documentary
about a Haitian immigrant whose father
is returning to live in Haiti.
Five of Marie's Favorite
Films
Report, dir. Bruce Conner
Beau
Travail, dir. Claire Denis
Nights of Cabiria, dir. Federico
Fellini
Close
Up, dir. Abbas Kiarostami
The
Year of Living Dangerously, dir.
Peter Weir
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