Australian-American film director
Catherine Gund |
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| Born | Catherine Gund Saalfield
1965 (age 58–59)
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| Nationality | American |
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| Alma mater | Brown University |
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| Known for | film production, directing, writing, activism |
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Catherine Gund (born Catherine Gund Saalfield; 1965)[1] is an American producer, director, and writer[2] who founded Aubin Pictures in 1996.[3]
Gund's films have screened around the world in festivals, theaters, museums, and schools; on PBS, HBO, Paramount+/MTV Documentary Films, and the Discovery Channel, Sundance Channel, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. She is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Early life
Catherine Gund was born in Geelong, Australia but grew up in Ohio.[4] She is the daughter of billionaire philanthropist Agnes Gund and her first husband, Albrecht "Brec" Saalfield. She attended Brown University and received a dual degree in Art/Semiotics and Women's Studies,[5] and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.[6]
Career
Upon graduation, Gund moved to New York City to do the Whitney Independent Study Program and joined ACT UP. She co-founded DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activist Television), the AIDS activist video collective affiliated with ACT UP/NY whose productions included Target City Hall, Pride '69-'89, Like a Prayer, and Stop the Church. During this time, she also became involved with Paper Tiger Television, a collectively produced weekly public access show, and contributed to shows from 1987-1994.[7][8] Much of her early video work from this time is held at the New York Public Library as a part of their AIDS Activist Videotape Collection.
Gund's early activist video work focused on AIDS activism and the LGBTQ+ community. Her work in the early 1990s included Bleach, Teach, and Outreach (1989, co-produced with Ray Navarro) to document the emergence of a city-sponsored needle exchange program to combat the spread of HIV; Keep Your Laws Off My Body (1990, co-produced with Zoe Leonard) about censorship and legislation against privacy and lesbian bodies; Among Good Christian Peoples (1991, co-produced with Jacqueline Woodson) based on Woodson’s humorous essay about growing up as a Black lesbian Jehovah’s Witness; I’m You, You’re Me: Women Surviving Prison Living with AIDS (1992, co-produced with Debbie Levine); Sacred Lies, Civil Truths (1993, co-produced with Cyrille Phipps) documented the Religious Right and its broad-based agenda, analyzes their campaigns for anti-gay initiatives in Oregon and Colorado in 1992, also examining issues of family and religion in lesbian and gay communities; Not Just Passing Through (1994, co-produced with Polly Thistlethwaite, Dolores Perez, and Jean Carlomusto) a four-part documentary about constructions of lesbian history, community and culture; Cuz It's A Boy (1994, about the murder of Brandon Teena); Positive: Life with HIV (1993-95, senior associate producer & segment producer) AIDSFILMS’ four hour series about HIV/AIDS targeted at the HIV community covering political, psycho-social, cultural, medical and legal issues of living with HIV/AIDS.[9]
In 1996, Gund founded Aubin Pictures, a nonprofit documentary film company with scholar and activist Scot Nakagawa. She produced Aubin's first film, When Democracy Works (1996), that same year, in a three-part focus on stories of multi-issue organizing. Three years later, she produced and directed the feature documentary Hallelujah! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance (1998) about controversial and iconoclastic performance artist Ron Athey, and co-directed Object Lessons (1999) along with Catherine Lord, which uses the creation of a gallery exhibition to question received ideas about lesbian visibility, community, culture, and identity. In 2000 she produced On Hostile Ground, a documentary about three abortion providers working in the USA. It was broadcast on the Sundance Channel.
In 2004, she produced Making Grace, documenting the journey of a lesbian couple having a baby together. Gund's documentary, A Touch of Greatness (2004), about the revolutionary teaching practices of elementary school teacher Albert Cullum, was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy. The film also won Best Documentary award at Hamptons International Film Festival in 2004.[citation needed]
She produced Motherland Afghanistan in 2006 about an OB/GYN struggling to make a difference in his homeland of Afghanistan, first at Kabul's renamed Laura Bush Maternity Ward and then in an isolated provincial hospital where patients often travel for several days to get treatment. Broadcast on PBS/Independent Lens.
In 2009, Gund produced and directed a segment for Sesame Street called Rhyme Time (2009) with poet Idris Goodwin about kids and healthy eating. What's On Your Plate? (2009), a documentary directed by Gund and two eleven-year-old girls about healthy, sustainable eating from a kid's perspective, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and was featured in the Discovery Channel's Planet Green. Chavela (2017) follows the life and legend of lesbian Mexican ranchera chanteuse Chavela Vargas. Dispatches from Cleveland (2017) about how communities in Cleveland united to fight for justice in the face of police violence after the death of Tamir Rice.
Aggie (2020) is a feature-length documentary that explores the nexus of art, race, and justice through the story of her mother, powerhouse art collector Agnes "Aggie" Gund. The film chronicles Agnes Gund's stunning journey to sell a Roy Lichtenstein painting to invest in the Art for Justice Fund. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020 and was released theatrically in October 2020. Gund produced America (2018), a short film directed by Garrett Bradley. Gund produced Primera (2021) for HBO that told the story of four parents-turned activists leading Chile's revolutionary path to a new constitution.
She also produced Angola Do You Hear Us? Voices from a Plantation Prison (2022) (formerly A Peculiar Silence), a short film directed by Cinque Northern about Liza Jessie Peterson's shutdown 2020 performance of her acclaimed play The Peculiar Patriot at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola.
Her archival footage has been featured in numerous TV Shows and films, including How to Survive a Plague, United in Anger, the 2012 documentary Koch, VICE Special Report: Countdown to Zero,[10] Fauci (2022), Cured (2020), and Larry Kramer in Love and Anger (2015).
Gund currently serves on the boards of Art For Justice Fund, Art Matters, and is the Chair of The George Gund Foundation. She was the founder and a founding board member of JustMedia. She was a founding board member of Baldwin for the Arts and currently serves on their advisory board. She also co-founded the Third Wave Foundation, an organization that resources youth-led, intersectional, gender justice movements. She was the founding director of BENT TV, the video workshop for LGBTQI youth, and was on the founding boards of Iris House, Working Films, Reality Dance Company, and The Sister Fund. Previously, Gund has served on the boards of Bard Early Colleges, Osa Conservation, MediaRights.org, The Robeson Fund of the Funding Exchange, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, and the Astraea Foundation.[11]
