2012-12-13 - Frederick Marx is an internationally acclaimed, Oscar and Emmy nominated director/writer with 35 years in the film business. He was named a Chicago Tribune Artist of the Year for 1994, a 1995 Guggenheim Fellow, and a recipient of a Robert F. Kennedy Special Achievement Award. His film HOOP DREAMS played in hundreds of theatres nationwide after winning the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was the first documentary ever chosen to close the New York Film Festival. It was on over 100 "Ten Best" lists nationwide and was named Best Film of the Year by critics Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, Gene Shalit, and Ken Turran and by the Chicago Film Critics Association. Ebert also named it Best Film of the Decade. It is one of the highest grossing non-musical documentaries in United States history.
Having dedicated his life to the making and promotion of independent films, Marx, a true maverick in the increasingly commercialized world of "independent cinema," continues to provide a voice of artistic and social integrity. He repeatedly returns to work with disadvantaged and misunderstood communities: people of color, abused children, the working poor, welfare recipients, prisoners, the elderly, and "at risk" youth. He brings a passion for appreciating multiculturalism and an urgent empathy for the sufferings of the disadvantaged to every subject he tackles.
Your Challenge is to find your mission.
It's important to note that a mission should be bigger than what any one man can reasonably accomplish in his own lifetime. This is not a time for false modesty, to think small. This is a time to think big, real big. Many lifetimes big. Seven generations big. Think the cathedrals of Europe. Many men worked their entire lives on one small part of the structure and died never seeing it complete.
So find your mission. Tell your story. Make a difference. Change the world. Starting today.
