Sam Green is a San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker. His film, The Weather Underground, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004, broadcast nationally on PBS, and included in the Whitney Biennial.[1]
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Green was raised in East Lansing, Michigan and is a graduate of East Lansing High School. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied documentary with acclaimed filmmaker Marlon Riggs. He currently teaches film and video at the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of San Francisco.
Green's feature-length documentary film The Weather Underground focused on the group of young radicals of the same name, who during the late 1960s and '70s attempted to violently overthrow the United States government. The film premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for a 2003 Academy Award for Documentary Feature category.[2] The award winning film interweaves extensive archival material with modern-day interviews to explore the story of the Weather Underground. The New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell called the documentary a "terrifically smart and solid piece of film-making."[3]
The Rainbow Man/John 3:16 focuses on the life of Rollen Stewart, who became famous during the 1970s by appearing at thousands of televised sporting events wearing a rainbow-colored wig. The film premiered at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, where Trevor Groth said "More than an exploration one life, The Rainbow Man is a parable about alienation, the media, and the meaninglessness that often defines American life."
Green's other documentaries include The Universal Language; lot 63, grave c (about Meredith Hunter); N-Judah 5:30; Pie Fight ’69; and Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall.
Sam Green's new documentary (2010), "Utopia in Four Movements," screened twice at this year's Sundance Film Festival in the category entitled "New Frontiers." In this "live" documentary, Green himself narrates the 75"--minute film while a live band provides some of the sound track. The Sundance program explains, "From the establishment of a man-made language designed to end war and cultural conflict, and the undying optimism of an American exile in Cuba, to the current economic boom in China and the desire to give the remains in mass graves a dignified burial, Green and co-director Dave Cerf sift through the history of the utopian impulse with audiences and search for insights about the way to build a vision of the future based on humankind's noblest impulses." The man-made language refers to Esperanto.