Amie Williams

Amie, co-founder and Executive Director of GlobalGirl Media has been working at the intersection of filmmaking and human rights for over thirty years.

She founded her own film/video production company, GLOBALGIRLMEDIA PRODUCTIONS (formerly Bal Maiden Films) in 1991, at the dawn of the digital revolution, when the entire landscape of filmmaking was shifting.

A renowned American documentary filmmaker and journalist, she has been excavating stories from Siberia to Soweto, Tokyo to Nairobi, shooting schoolgirls in the Saharan desert, refugees in Lebanese camps, striking dockworkers in Barcelona and one of the only camerawomen to cover the day the last piece of steel was removed from the tragic 9-11 World Trade Tower bombings. Her work has broadcast on PBS, Al Jazeera, BBC, HBO and CBC Canada.

Her feature documentary films include Uncommon Ground, Fallon, Nv: Deadly Oasis, Stripped and Teased, One Day Longer, No Sweat, and We Are Wisconsin, a film about the citizen uprising against anti-worker legislation, recently nominated for an International Documentary Association Award and featured on Moveon.org, “This film will be the record people will refer to a hundred years from now when they study this era of greed. ” said Michael Moore, who hosted her his Traverse City Film Festival in 2012.

Amie's films have won numerous awards, such as the International Documentary Association Award, Top Ten Audience Award at Hot Docs, the SONY/Streisand Award for emerging female filmmakers, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation International Peace Grant. In 2010, Amie was selected to tour the world by the America Film Institute /U.S. State Department, partnering with other filmmakers in the inaugural 20/20 Cultural Exchange Program (now run by the Sundance Institute and State Department).

Amie has written two narrative screenplays, A Journey of Winter and Summer, a story of two sisters from Tunisia, one of whom runs away to join ISIS. The script was selected as a finalist for the 2018 Sundance Screenwriting Workshop. It is presently being produced by Les Films D’Ici in Paris (Fuocammare, nominated for an Oscar in 2016); and Cinetele Films in Tunisia (La Belle et La Muete, Cannes, 2017). She was also a Film Independent Directors Lab participant for her original screenplay, Jua Kali, about a Kenyan Aids orphan.

Through her film work, Amie was asked to blog for Huffington Post, and has written as a freelance journalist, most recently for Moveon.org and TruthDig. She also gave a Tedx TALK on women in media in Barcelona in 2015. Amie also worked as a freelance producer/director for Al Jazeera English between 2010-2015.

In 2010, Amie co-founded the non-profit, GLOBALGIRL MEDIA, which develops the voice and media literacy of young women by teaching them to create and share digital journalism designed to improve scholastic achievement, ignite community activism and spark social change. Currently, she is the Executive Director, managing projects in South Africa, Morocco, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, London, Tunisia, Guatemala, Kenya and Oakland, California.

Because of her commitment to fighting for gender parity in media, she was recently named one of the “50 Women Who Can Change Media and Entertainment,” by Take the Lead, joining an outstanding group of leading female media executives to build a coalition and create a blueprint for change. She has consulted for Film Independent (FIND), Latino Public Broadcasting, ITVS and has taught film production at San Francisco State, UCLA and Tsuda College in Tokyo, Japan. She Co-founded and Artistically Directed the first international film festival in Las Vegas, CINEVEGAS in 1998, which was then taken over by Trevor Groth of Sundance.

Amie graduated from Yale University (B.A., English and Theater, 1985); and U.C.L.A (MFA, Film, 1992). She now splits her time between Athens, Greece and Los Angeles, California working as a freelance journalist, filmmaker and running the GlobalGirl Media Greece program.

Articles by Amie Williams

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