Jeremy Marre
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jeremy Marre is a television director, writer and producer who founded Harcourt Films. Many of his films are on musical subjects. His reputation was made with the Beats of the Heart series, which introduced elements of what is now called world music to the Western world, and its performers.
[edit] Biography
Marre grew up and was educated in London. He read law and began training as a lawyer, before studying film at the Slade School and the Royal College of Art. He is married with two sons.
[edit] Career to date
Marre recently completed a documentary on the American prison gang The Aryan Brotherhood. He is currently directing two films for the BBC Music series Soul Brittania examining the history and influence ofsoul music in Britain.
In 2005 Marre directed and produced Marvin Gaye: What's Going On?, a biography for the PBS series American Masters and BBC television. And he’s completing production of The Real Phil Spector, a one-hour biography of the reclusive music producer charged with murder, for Channel 4.
Marre worked with James Brown on Soul Survivor -- The James Brown Story, a 90-minute biography featuring extended interviews, rehearsal, and performance by James Brown, also featuring Little Richard, Chuck D, Dan Aykroyd and many others.
Marre is writing the screenplay for the feature film Ladyboys', based on his award-winning documentary Ladyboys, shown on Channel 4 and around the world, which opened the San Francisco Film Festival.
In 2003 Marre also directed episodes of Channel 4’s music series The Voice (featuring a range of artists, from Pavarotti to Bono to Brian Wilson), which explores the human voice and the qualities that make a singer.
His Grammy Nominated (2002) 90 minute Bob Marley biography Rebel Music for Channel 4 and PBS ‘'American Masters’ won the 2002 American Cine Golden Eagle. Jeremy also directed the BAFTA nominated (2002)[1] opening one-hour film for the BBC series Walk on By which explored the music of early immigrants to the U.S, like Jerome Kern, the Gershwins and Irving Berlin. This won the major music documentary award at the 2002 Montreux Film Festival .
Marre produced and directed the major eight-hour Channel 4 series Chasing Rainbows, which was a part-dramatised story of British popular music; and the 3-part series Nature of Music (Channel 4) about ritual and music around the world, from Bali to Brazil, and featuring Beyreuth Opera House's new Ring Cycle. Jeremy also produced and directed Forbidden Image, about the Indian erotic arts, with an original score by Ravi Shankar, for ITV.
Marre's four-part Channel 4 series about musical improvisation around the world, On the Edge, was preceded by Beats of the Heart [2] a 14-hour, multi-award-winning series on world music that was networked several times on British television, accompanied by Jeremy’s book of the same name and 14 videos/DVDs. The films include Roots, Rock, Reggae (Jamaican music) and Rhythm of Resistance on black music as resistance to apartheid in South Africa.
With writer Gerald Durrell, he produced and directed the ground-breaking 12-part animal communication series Ourselves and Other Animals (for Channel 4 and CBC). Marre has also made several South Bank Shows for ITV, including the Golden Harp winner on Salsa (music), profiles of Herbert von Karajan and Claudio Abbado (for ITV/Granada International), and the popular Wedding Day series for LWT.
Marre has made two acclaimed cinema films on the Japanese martial arts, called Way of the Sword and Soul of the Samauri. He has been developing, with Channel 4 International and the European Media Club, new approaches to interactive programming, and has provided programming, and personal workshops, for the innovative Experience Music Project in Seattle, USA.
He has run director courses for the National Film School, sat on the advisory boards for the National Sound Archive and the Arts Council of England, has broadcast widely on BBC radio, has written for The Times, The Sunday Telegraph, New York Post and The Independent. Jeremy Marre was the subject of the weekly ‘Arts Feature’ of the New York Times following the publication of his last book, and had retrospectives of his music films at the Florence Film Festival and on Channel 4.
