WORLDS OF URSULA K. LE GUIN
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin is a feature documentary exploring the remarkable life and legacy of the late feminist author Ursula K. Le Guin. Best known for groundbreaking science fiction and fantasy works such as A Wizard of Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Dispossessed, Le Guin defiantly held her ground on the margin of “respectable” literature until the sheer excellence of her work, at long last, forced the mainstream to embrace fantastic literature. Her fascinating story has never before been captured on film.
Produced with Le Guin’s participation over the course of a decade, Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin is a journey through the writer’s career and her worlds, both real and fantastic. Viewers will join the writer on an intimate journey of self-discovery as she comes into her own as a major feminist author, opening new doors for the imagination and inspiring generations of women and other marginalized writers along the way. The film features stunning animation and reflections by literary luminaries including Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Michael Chabon, and more.
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin was created with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, California Humanities, the Berkeley Film Foundation, and 3,185 backers on Kickstarter.
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Film Close-up: Arwen Curry
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Arwen Curry
Director, Producer
Arwen Curry worked with Ursula K. Le Guin for ten years to create Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin. As an associate producer, her projects include EAMES: The Architect and the Painter (2011), American Jerusalem: Jews and the Making of San Francisco (2013), Regarding Susan Sontag (2014), and five 30-minute science and technology documentaries made for the PBS member station KQED between 2012 and 2014. She also directed a short documentary, Stuffed (2008). Arwen is a former chief editor of the seminal punk magazine Maximum Rocknroll and has written for print, radio, and film. Arwen is a graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in San Francisco with her husband Johnny Nackley and their two little boys, Desmond and Stee.
Juli Vizza
Editor
Juli Vizza is an award-winning editor and producer with nearly two decades of experience in both fiction and non-fiction filmmaking. Her films have premiered at the world’s top film festivals.
Andrew Gersh
Editor
Andrew Gersh is an award-winning documentary film editor based in Berkeley, CA. His work has screened around the world in festivals, theaters, museums and on television, including HBO, Netflix, Showtime, ABC, PBS, BBC and Channel 4, UK.
Jason Andrew Cohn
Co-Producer
Jason Andrew Cohn is the producer, writer and director of the Peabody Award-winning EAMES: The Architect and the Painter which aired nationally on PBS American Masters in 2011, following a successful theatrical release.
Camille Servan-Schreiber
Co-Producer
Camille Servan-Schreiber has worked in documentary film since 1998 and has received numerous awards including a Golden Spire Award from the San Francisco Film Festival.
Andrew Black
Director of Photography
Andrew Black shoots acclaimed features and documentaries, including Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 and Sicko. He shot the Academy Award-nominated The Weather Underground by Sam Green and Bill Siegel.
Ariana Reguzzoni
Associate Producer
Ariana Reguzzoni is the Associate Producer of Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin. She has worked for PBS Frontline, KQED, Current TV and Northern Light Productions in Boston, MA.
Molly Schwartz
Animator
Molly Schwartz runs her own production studio creating art, animation, design, special effects, code and interaction for public art installations, site-specific projection, and documentary film.
William Ryan Fritch
Composer
William Ryan Fritch is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, engineer, and producer living in the artisan community of Petaluma, California.
“Film is a visual medium, but that doesn’t mean it all has to take place on the surface of your eyeballs. It can move right inside your head and be where it belongs, in the place where the dreams come from.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1980
Audience Choice Documentary
Macon Film Festival
Best of Fest
Boston Science Fiction Film Festival
Best of Fest
D.C. Independent Film Festival
Best Documentary Semi-Finalist
Berlin Sci-fi Filmfest
Outstanding Story
Women in Film Festival
Visionary Women Filmmaker
Santa Cruz Film Festival
Audience Vote For Documentary
International Women Make
Movies of Zaragoza, Spain
Background
Ursula Kroeber was born on October 21, 1929 in Berkeley, California, where she grew up. Her parents were the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and Theodora Kracaw Kroeber, author of Ishi in Two Worlds. She went to Radcliffe College and did graduate work at Columbia University.
Ursula K. Le Guin was prolific in both poetry and prose, mainly in the genres of realistic fiction, science fiction and fantasy. She wrote 22 novels as well as dozens of volumes of short stories, poems, young children’s books, books for young adults, screenplays, essays, and works of translation.
Ursula K. Le Guin died on January 22, 2018 at her home in Portland, Oregon. She is survived by her husband, historian Charles A. Le Guin, her three children, and her four grandchildren.
Most of Le Guin’s major titles have remained continuously in print, some for over 40 years. For an in-depth bibliography visit www.ursulakleguin.com.
Writing
Le Guin first began publishing in the mid-1960s, and soon became known for her cultural sophistication and artistry. Her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality, and ethnography. Le Guin, by elevating science fiction from mind candy to serious speculation, gave permission to younger mainstream writers like Michael Chabon, Zadie Smith, and David Mitchell to explore fantastic elements in their work.
In 2014 Le Guin was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2002 she won a PEN/Malamud Award for “excellence in a body of short fiction.”
In April 2000 the U.S. Library of Congress made her a Living Legend in the “Writers and Artists” category for her significant contributions to America’s cultural heritage.
In science fiction, Le Guin won the top awards many times over. For novels alone, she won five Locus, four Nebula, two Hugo, and one World Fantasy Award. (The Dispossessed won the Locus, Nebula, and Hugo.) Her third Earthseanovel, The Farthest Shore, won the 1973 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Unlocking the Air and Other Stories was one of three finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
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