Jeremy Marre
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Jeremy Marre is a television director, writer and producer who founded Harcourt Films and has worked extensively around the world. Many of his films are on musical subjects. His reputation was made with the Beats of the Heart series[1], which introduced elements of what is now called world music, and its performers[2], to the Western world[3]. 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. There have been retrospectives of his music films at the Florence Film Festival and on Channel 4.
[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[4]. He was series producer of the BBC Music series Soul Britannia examining the history and influence ofsoul music in Britain[5].
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[6], also featuring Little Richard, Chuck D, Dan Aykroyd[7] 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.
His Grammy Nominated (2002) 90 minute Bob Marley biography Rebel Music[8] for Channel 4 and PBS ‘American Masters’[9] won the 2002 American Cine Golden Eagle as well as a series Emmy. Jeremy also directed the BAFTA nominated (2002)[10] 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, 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[11], was preceded by Beats of the Heart [12] 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)[13] and Rhythm of Resistance on black music as resistance to apartheid in South Africa.
With writer Gerald Durrell, he produced and directed the 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 Samuari.
