[{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/wiki.edu.vn\/en\/wiki40\/fronza-woods-wikipedia\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/wiki.edu.vn\/en\/wiki40\/fronza-woods-wikipedia\/","headline":"Fronza Woods – Wikipedia","name":"Fronza Woods – Wikipedia","description":"before-content-x4 American filmmaker after-content-x4 Fronza Woods Fronza Woods, photo by Katherine Spencer Carey after-content-x4 Born October 20, 1943 Alma\u00a0mater Wayne","datePublished":"2018-05-14","dateModified":"2018-05-14","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/wiki.edu.vn\/en\/wiki40\/author\/lordneo\/#Person","name":"lordneo","url":"https:\/\/wiki.edu.vn\/en\/wiki40\/author\/lordneo\/","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c9645c498c9701c88b89b8537773dd7c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c9645c498c9701c88b89b8537773dd7c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Enzyklop\u00e4die","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/wiki.edu.vn\/wiki4\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/download.jpg","url":"https:\/\/wiki.edu.vn\/wiki4\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/download.jpg","width":600,"height":60}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/d\/dd\/FronzaWoods2019byKCarey.jpg\/220px-FronzaWoods2019byKCarey.jpg","url":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/d\/dd\/FronzaWoods2019byKCarey.jpg\/220px-FronzaWoods2019byKCarey.jpg","height":"305","width":"220"},"url":"https:\/\/wiki.edu.vn\/en\/wiki40\/fronza-woods-wikipedia\/","about":["Wiki"],"wordCount":6341,"articleBody":"     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});before-content-x4American filmmaker       (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});after-content-x4Fronza WoodsFronza Woods, photo by Katherine Spencer Carey       (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});after-content-x4BornOctober 20, 1943Alma\u00a0materWayne State UniversityOccupation(s)Film director, professorFronza Woods is an American filmmaker best known for her short films including Killing Time (1979) and Fannie’s Film (1982).Table of ContentsBiography[edit]Legacy and cultural impact[edit]Short films[edit]Killing Time (1979)[edit]Fannie’s Film (1981)[edit]References[edit]Citations[edit]Sources[edit]External links[edit]Biography[edit]Born in Detroit just before the earnest start of the automobile industry\u2019s boom, Woods\u2019 credits both the city\u2019s vibrant cultural life and her mother\u2019s love of film and dance as early artistic influences. Growing up towards the tail end of \u2018the golden age of radio, Woods\u2019remembers sitting under the radio with her siblings listening to the likes of The Jack Benny Program, Burns and Allen, The Life of Riley, Amos \u2019n\u2019 Andy, The Shadow, Fibber McGee and Molly, Beulah, The Great Gildersleeve, The Lone Ranger. Of this, she claims growing up, she honed her skills of imagining the characters she wasn\u2019t seeing. That ethos of portraitive, reciprocal representation comes through in her two shorts Killing Time (1979) and Fannie\u2019s Film (1981), both of which foreground the rich interior lives of their main characters as much as they highlight a preoccupation with their visibility to the outside world.[1]  She attended Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan and graduated with a BA in Mass Communications and Russian.[2]       (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});after-content-x4She began her career as a junior copywriter at a small Detroit advertising agency.[3] In 1967, she relocated to New York City where she started working in television at ABC as a production assistant in the documentary unit.[4][2] She also taught Pilates for a number of years at the Robert Fitzgerald Studio in Manhattan.[2]Woods directed, wrote, and produced independent films, most notably Killing Time and Fannie’s Film. Before making her own films, Woods worked on shorts at the Women’s Interart Center in Hell’s Kitchen[5] with the support of Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer.[3] She also worked as a guest filmmaker in the Lincoln Center Film Society’s “Artist in the Schools program.” Fronza reflected on the start of her film career: “Almost nothing I\u2019ve done in my life has really been by choice. I went into advertising because I was offered a job, I went into television because I was offered a job. The first time I chose something, it was movies.”[7]In addition to making her own films, Woods was an assistant sound engineer for John Sayles’s film The Brother From Another Planet. She was also involved as a cast member in the 1985 film, The Man Who Envied Women.[9] Of her role in the film industry, Woods said “I think the male-female divisions are more defining”.[5] Woods said that she was influenced by people as diverse as Bill Moyers, Malcolm X, Georgia O’Keeffe and others.Woods attended NYU film school until she left to became a teacher. She moved to Milwaukee where she taught filmmaking at the University of Milwaukee.[4] After meeting her husband she immigrated to France in 1987.[7]Legacy and cultural impact[edit]Woods is one of the first black woman directors that completed multiple short films.[4] In 2017, BAM Cinematheque in New York City included both Killing Time and Fannie\u2019s Film in a new season.[11] This proved to be the start of a contemporary “re-discovery” of Wood’s work. Woods describes receiving the news in 2017 that her films were to be featured, nearly thirty-five years after they were produced: “It was very strange, not to say a bit destabilizing.\u00a0Suddenly… I was catapulted forward, backward and sideways in time. I was an artist, and I use that word loosely, who had never really been discovered \u2014 I\u2019m speaking solely of critics and the media, the people who have the power to make or break one\u2019s career \u2014 yet was now being re-discovered.”[12]Richard Brody called Killing Time “very simply, one of the best short films that I\u2019ve ever seen.”[13] Melissa Anderson of the Village Voice praised Woods’s film Fannie’s Film: “she makes the mundane facts of Drayton\u2019s life indelible.”[14]Hyperallergic writes that Woods gives otherwise invisible women like Drayton a platform and calls the documentary “extraordinary.”[15] The New York Times wrote that Woods “humorously yet movingly contemplates existence” in Killing Time.[16]In 2019, Killing Time and Fannie’s Film were screened at a film festival of the Institut Jean Vigo at the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que de Perpignan in France.[17] That same year, both films were featured at the Courtisane Film Festival in Ghent, Belgium as part of the series “Breaking Sacred Ground: African-American Independent Filmmaking on the US East Coast, 1967-1989.[18][19] In November 2019, Woods’ films were featured during the 41st edition of the Festival des 3 Continents in Nantes, France.[20][21][22] In June, 2021, Killing Time and Fannie\u2019s Film were screened by Royal Cine Cineclube in Lisbon, Portugal.In an essay titled “40 Years and 19,979,520 Feet From Stardom or, The Perils of Being (Re)Discovered\u2026\u201d published online in June 2021, Woods humorously reflects on her time as a filmmaker and the late recognition of her work: “When I was a confused, ambitious, younger woman embarking on my filmmaking career, I went to a psychic who I was hoping would tell me \u201cone day you\u2019re going to be a famous filmmaker.\u201d Alas, there was no mention of filmmaking, let alone fame, I had to content myself with \u201cyours will not be just any old name in the phone book.\u201d At the time I was disappointed, not to say terribly disappointed with his lackluster prediction. As it turns out, he was right, and now I’m thinking this late recognition is good enough for me. 19,979,520 feet from stardom is not such a bad place to be.”[12]Short films[edit]Killing Time (1979)[edit]Killing Time is a 1979 narrative short film written and directed by Fronza Woods. The film is a dark comedy that follows a woman (played by Woods but credited with the stage name “Sage Brush”) as she prepares to commit suicide. The duration of the film is 9 minutes.[24]Richard Brody called Killing Time “very simply, one of the best short films that I\u2019ve ever seen.”[13] In response, Woods reflected: “The most beautiful, thoughtful, understanding and generous analysis being Richard Brody\u2019s review of the series in his The Front Row column for the New Yorker.\u00a0I was touched and stunned that he was able to empathize so deeply with the plight of black women filmmakers of that era.”[12] Hugues Perrot describes the film: “…a bitter and insolent ballad, shows the casual disarray of a woman, alone in her room, searching for the appropriate attire for her suicide. In a jaunty rather than joyful tone (her artificially cheerful whistling), the film ends up hypnotising us, humour acting less as a safety valve than as a corollary of despair.”[25] Woods says of the film: “I would have a protagonist whose inability to decide what to wear in order to kill herself would ultimately save her life. It was never a film about suicide. It\u2019s a film about what you think will happen if you kill yourself. I don\u2019t want to make light of suicide, it\u2019s not a light matter.”[7] Speaking on the impetus and conditions that bore Killing Time (1979), Woods describes what, in many ways, was a serendipitous orchestration of constraint: \u201cTo tell the truth, Killing Time was the best I could come up with, on the quick, for a subject for a student film  It was developed around this very simple truth a friend observed about me\u2014that I would never be able to commit suicide because I wouldn\u2019t know what to wear.\u201d Meditating on themes such as vanity, ego, self-pity, self-importance, and, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, the life-saving effects of indecision, Wood\u2019s film sought to employ humor not as a means of trivializing the subject of suicidal ideation, but, instead, as a way of humanizing it.Fannie’s Film (1981)[edit]Fannie’s Film is a 1981 documentary short[26] that follows 65-year old Fannie Drayton, a cleaning woman.[27] The film is told from the perspective of Drayton and is 15 minutes in duration.[28][15] Hugues Perrot writes: “In parallel with the hieratic figures that come and go on the sports machines, she is filmed alone cleaning the studio emptied of its ghosts. The film upends paradigms, plunging the visible world into a bare space and giving body to an inaudible voice \u2013 a voice that is especially moving as it recounts the joyfulness of the life it has led.”[29]Fannie’s Film was selected for the 1985 Cr\u00e9teil International Women’s Film Festival.[30] Woods comments: \u201cI like films about real people. I am inspired by almost everything but especially by struggle. I am interested in people who take on a challenge, no matter how great or small, and come to terms with it. What inspires me are people who don\u2019t sit on life\u2019s rump but have the courage, energy, and audacity not only to grab it by the horns, but to steer it as well.\u201d[31] With Fannie\u2019s Film, Woods\u2019 saw the short as an opportunity to filmically express her own anger about inequality and \u201cbenign\u201d racism. Woods, of the film, said \u201c I really did want people to think about the \u201cinvisible\u201d people who make their lives more livable. I wanted to make a film that showed that those people have rich lives and people that love them, too. They, too, dream. They, too, can be funny and insightful. But you\u2019ll never know it if you don\u2019t engage with them, if you pretend they don\u2019t exist. In hindsight, it sounds embarrassingly \u2018worthy!\u2019\u201d[32]References[edit]Citations[edit]^ Ogwang, Lydia. The Criterion Collection https:\/\/www.criterion.com\/current\/posts\/7918-killing-time-with-fronza-woods. Retrieved 11 March 2023. ^ a b c “Fronza Woods”. Cinema of Ideas. Retrieved 2021-11-05.^ a b “Conversation with Fronza Woods \u2013 Diagonal Thoughts”. Retrieved 2021-06-08.^ a b c Women, Invisible (2021-03-10). “Spotlight: Fronza Woods”. Invisible Women. Retrieved 2021-06-08.^ a b Aufderheide, Pat (1984). “Sayles in Harlem”. Film Comment. 20 (2): 4\u20136. JSTOR\u00a043452785.^ a b c “Two Films by Fronza Woods”. Another Screen. Retrieved 2021-12-12.^ Green, Shelley (1994). Radical Juxtaposition: The Films of Yvonne Rainer. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, Inc. pp.\u00a0127\u2013128. ISBN\u00a00810828634 \u2013 via Archive.org.^ “Grey Area + 2 By Fronza Woods”. BAM.org. Retrieved 2021-06-08.^ a b c ““40 Years and 19,979,520 Feet from Stardom or, the Perils of Being (Re)Discovered\u2026” \u2014 by Fronza Woods”. Milestone Films. Retrieved 2021-06-08.^ a b “NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, February 8\u201314”. Brooklyn Magazine. 8 February 2017.^ Anderson, Melissa (30 January 2017). “They Are Somebody: BAM Reveals the Rich History of Black Women Filmmakers”. Village Voice. Retrieved 31 October 2017.^ a b Hubert, Craig (2017-02-03). “Rewriting Film History with Two Decades of Black Women’s Cinema”. Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2017-11-01.^ Dargis, Manohla (2017). “A Film Series Honors Black Women Directors”. The New York Times. ISSN\u00a00362-4331. Retrieved 2017-11-01.^ “Killing Time & Fannie’s Film”. Institut Jean Vigo (in French). Retrieved 2021-06-08.^ “Breaking Sacred Ground | Courtisane”. www.courtisane.be. Retrieved 2021-06-08.^ “07: Shorts: E. Owens \/ F. Woods \/ C. Billops & J. Hatch | Courtisane”. www.courtisane.be. Retrieved 2021-11-05.^ Galliot, Eponine Le. “Le Festival des 3 continents \u00e0 Nantes propose une r\u00e9trospective sur le cin\u00e9ma noir am\u00e9ricain – Les Inrocks”. www.lesinrocks.com\/ (in French). Retrieved 2021-06-08.^ “RETOUR SUR LE 41\u00e8me FESTIVAL DES 3 CONTINENTS \u2013 NANTES (2019)”. L’EMPIRE DES IMAGES (in French). 2019-12-01. Retrieved 2021-06-08.^ “Fronza Woods”. Festival des 3 Continents. Retrieved 2021-11-05.^ Williams, John (1994). “Daughters of the Diaspora: A Filmography of Sixty-Five Black Women Independent Film- and Video-Makers”. Cin\u00e9aste. 20 (3): 41\u201342. JSTOR\u00a041687325.^ “Killing Time”. Festival des 3 Continents. Retrieved 2021-06-08.^ Fannie’s Film (1981)|MUBI^ Drayton, Fannie; Fitz, Tracy; Jabaily, Barbara; Archbold, Schellie; Barcal, Beth; Onove, Dyne Benner; Bram, Leon; Edwards, Alan; Handy, Judy; Hazen, Lise; Cunningham, Jaimie; Levinson, Gary; Miller, Doug; Mitz, Rick; Phillips, John; Prieto, Berthica; Sherman, Maxine; South, Dean (1979). Fannie’s Film. Distributed by Women Make Movies. OCLC\u00a080650831.^ Fraser, C. Gerald (1986-12-28). “Black Women’s Outlook in Whitney Film Series”. The New York Times. ISSN\u00a00362-4331. Retrieved 2017-11-01.^ “Fannie’s Film”. Festival des 3 Continents. Retrieved 2021-06-08.^ “Trims * Glitches”. The Independent. 8: 34. 1985 \u2013 via Archive.org.^ “07: Shorts: E. Owens \/ F. Woods \/ C. Billops & J. Hatch | Courtisane”. www.courtisane.be. Retrieved 2021-06-08.^ Ogwang, Lydia. The Criterion Collection. The Criterion Collection https:\/\/www.criterion.com\/current\/posts\/7918-killing-time-with-fronza-woods. Retrieved 11 March 2023. Sources[edit]External links[edit]     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});after-content-x4"},{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https:\/\/wiki.edu.vn\/en\/wiki40\/#breadcrumbitem","name":"Enzyklop\u00e4die"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https:\/\/wiki.edu.vn\/en\/wiki40\/fronza-woods-wikipedia\/#breadcrumbitem","name":"Fronza Woods – Wikipedia"}}]}]