Erin Greenwell: Your New Favorite Filmmaker

COVID-19 may have put a dent in the Marymount Manhattan College spring semester, but that isn't stopping Erin Greenwell from encouraging students to showcase their artwork and make social change. As soon as it was announced my NYC college would switch to online learning, Erin emailed a message to the entire community asking for drawings to be sent to the women of the Bedford Hills College Program: an organization that allows incarcerated women to receive an accessible college education while still carrying out their sentences at Bedford Hills. Below is a video Erin made about the program...

In her email about the drawings, Erin wrote, "For the students at Bedford and Taconic, because their spaces are incredibly vulnerable, they are without physical contact to anyone from the outside world (aside from officers) for at least until the end of the semester. While they have email to friends and family, this means no in-person visitors and/or professors. Education, which provides structure and stability, is severely curtailed. All teaching and grading is being done through snail mail (the professors mail lessons, the students do their homework handwritten, the homework is mailed back, the teachers grade and mail back responses and new lessons). Now more than ever, a simple note will go a long way as they are terribly isolated."

Erin attached her own note to the Bedford Hills women in the email...

While it is currently unknown how many drawings got sent in or what the digital collage of all the notes looks like, one thing is for certain: Erin has been a loud and proud voice for the women. Without her, our tiny student body probably wouldn't know, let alone care, about the women of Bedford Hills.

Every year, Erin curates the "Stand Up Speak Out" festival at Marymount. It's an art festival where students collaborate with the incarcerated women to create original films, dances, monologues, and drawings. Last year, the poetry and storyboards made by the Bedford Hills women during their Politics of Human Spaces and poetry courses were adapted into art pieces by the MMC community. Erin sent many emails about the event, and tried to get clubs and faculty members to promote it if possible. The day of the festival, so many people flocked to see the show, some audience members chose to stand because the performance space ran out of chairs.

This is the magic of Erin Greenwell. For her, no cause is too small to support - whether that's raising awareness about education for incarcerated persons, increasing LGBTQ+ representation in film (Erin herself is a proud lesbian), or just getting one of her students to pick up a video camera and try making a short film. If you do your research, you'll know Erin is an underrated master in her craft. She's edited numerous films, including the Cannes Film Festival award-winner, "Yommedine," and an upcoming feature film starring Danny Glover. The films she's directed have been accepted into numerous festivals, including her 2012 feature, "My Best Day," (trailer below) which was nominated for Sundance's "Best of Next" award. She also has the bragging right of working with Kate McKinnon, the Emmy-winning actress, before the starlet appeared in SNL episodes.

At Marymount Manhattan College, taking a class with Erin Greenwell is not just a privilege, but a rite of passage. I was lucky enough to meet Erin before I had the qualifications to take her classes. I always heard her name around the college's halls; in fact, she was the sponsor for the filmmaking club I helped start with a few upperclassmen. But it wasn't until my sophomore year of college, after she sent me an email out of the blue, I really got to know her.

Erin saw a student project I acted in and invited me to her office to talk about a film she would be directing. "It's called The Weathergirl," she said while we sat in her cubicle, "basically about a Hasidic teen who believes she's seen the Messiah and goes on a crazy adventure in Manhattan to find him again, only to get in trouble with her sect. It was written by Elena Zucker, from the Playwriting Department. This would be a mood reel to show to producers to help us get funding to make a feature."

I remember Erin sitting back in her chair, crossing her arms. "You'd be playing the lead. There's no dialogue - all I'd need for you to do is make expressions as the character, kind of like what you did for Sophie's film. I can't guarantee you the role in the feature because of producer agreements, and the most I can give you for compensation is a Metrocard for travel expenses. You still in?"

Of course I was absolutely, over-the-moon, no-doubts-in-my-mind in. I had been rejected twice from the acting program at Marymount Manhattan and was not allowed to audition for any of the college's plays. The fact Erin was offering me an opportunity to act when no one else would was more than enough reason for me to say yes.

We shot The Weathergirl mood reel during two freezing days in November. The first day next to the Brooklyn Public Library, it was so windy, the tea we bought to warm ourselves blew away when we left it unattended. Although the cold was horrendous and my lips literally turned a deep purple because of it, (I didn't notice until I looked at my face in a bathroom mirror later that day), Erin's kindness, creativity, and enthusiasm kept me and the all-female crew going. There was one scene where I had to tightrope-walk on a white street line, and Erin got an idea for a nifty camera angle. She attached the camera to a piece of equipment that I can only describe as a long pole, and set herself on top of a narrow wooden street divider.

"Spot me!" she said to one of the crew members. Some of us were concerned Erin was going to fall on her head, but she kept her balance. As I walked on the line, Erin panned the camera above me in the opposite direction. The result was a helicopter-like shot that looks like it was achieved by a fancy crane. Whenever I show people the clip in the reel, nine times out of ten they'll say something like, "woaaaaaah," or, "how did they do that?"

There's the shot, in GIF form! Pretty cool, right?

After wrapping The Weathergirl, Erin gave me the promised Metrocard (which I still have hung on my corkboard to this day), and sent me the footage to use for an acting reel. Two years later, Erin is still out looking for funding. While it may take some time for The Weathergirl to get produced, I can certainly say the tiny project changed my life. Erin's awesome footage has impressed many filmmakers I've shown it to, and has allowed me to book more professional film jobs. Despite never receiving any college acting training, I found out this month, during my senior year at Marymount Manhattan, that I am now eligible to join the esteemed Screen Actors Guild. It's a union that provides working actors with higher pay, healthcare, and other great benefits. If it weren't for Erin taking a chance on me, I would have never reached this important milestone in my career.

Of course, film acting isn't the only passion Erin has ignited in me. Before Greta Gerwig or Olivia Wilde stepped onto the directing scene, Erin Greenwell was the female director who made me think, "huh...I guess we need more lady directors like her." Making a film with Erin inspired me to get into directing, as well as film crew work. Shortly after The Weathergirl, she invited me to help out on another short film she was directing, called Skin the Wire.

It's a coming-of-age film about a girl and her three friends as they attend a pop-up carnival. The female protagonist, Ashlie, is a closeted teen who has a crush on her best friend, Rachel. As Ashlie encounters characters at the freak show and tests her luck at a game called the Wacky Wire, she gains the confidence to show Rachel how she truly feels.

When Erin premiered Skin the Wire at the New York Shorts Internationl Film Festival, she was asked during a Q+A what inspired her to make the film. Part of her answer went something like this: "I was reading an article on the internet about closeted teens. There was this statistic that showed how gay teens being in the closet can lead to aggressive behavior. I was really surprised by how high that percentage was, and wanted to make a film about how dangerous it can be to keep who you really are internalized."

It's Erin's bravery to choose personal, interesting subject matters for her films, as well as her bravery to try daring technical aspects (like the overhead Weathergirl shot), that inspire me and countless others at Marymount to follow in her directing footsteps. When taking her directing classes, she always encouraged my classmates and I to, "Experiment in your projects. It helps you find your voice. The worst that can happen is your experiment fails: then you learn from it and make a new film."

In addition to Stand Up Speak Out, Erin also helps organize a "One-Minute Film Festival" where students must create a short film in under a minute. Because of the simplicity of the challenge, many first-time filmmakers - including students not necessarily a part of the Communications Department - enter in their work. Erin showed my class her favorites after last year's festival. To her, anyone can make a good film: you just need to pick up a camera and do the darn thing.

That's Erin's greatest strength: her concern for the support and growth of all the students she teaches. This is why Erin instructs many classes for the senior thesis projects - you're in good hands when you're with her. The Communications Department at Marymount is severely underfunded and lacking state-of-the-art film equipment. This is challenging when you're creating a senior thesis film, as your work is expected to look professional and ready to be submitted to a film festival. Thanks to Erin's efforts, the media center was able to purchase new GH5 cameras and stabilizers last year. Students are now allowed to use them for their thesis projects.

Additionally, thanks to her guidance and support, the filmmaking club I helped start was able to organize student film festivals for new work. It's still going after four years. We took a poll at our film festival last semester, and almost a hundred people were in attendance - including Erin herself.

One year, I decided to make a comedic mockumentary (think "What We Do In the Shadows," but with a ghost instead of vampires), for one of the festivals. It got a good response when I privately showed it to the members of the club, but when it premiered as part of the festival, the room was dreadfully silent. You could almost hear the crickets. I had no clue why people weren't laughing at the jokes, and was discouraged by the disappointing response. Erin sent me an email later that night....

"Great film, Katy. Just remember: people don't laugh politely."

"People don't laugh politely," has now become my mantra for comedy writing. Needless to say, Erin's advice has significantly improved my work.

It's not just the filmmaker students Erin cares about. She's proven she cares about all Marymount Manhattan College students; not only through her support of the Bedford Hills College program, but in other ways too. Last semester, our college received a series of bomb threats resulting in several days of cancelled classes. The school held an open forum after the incident so students could voice their questions, concerns, and criticisms. Besides the adults running the event, Erin Greenwell was the only faculty member I saw in attendance. I watched her as she sat in the back of the room, diligently paying attention to what students had to say.

Because of her hard work and concern, it's no surprise that last month, the MMC Comm Arts Instagram announced Erin Greenwell finally got tenure at Marymount Manhattan College. Comm students rejoiced at the well-deserved promotion.

If you're a cinephile like me and have heard of a new film called Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always, you'll know it was directed by a woman named Eliza Hittman. Back in March, at the office where I interned, a friend revealed that Eliza was his professor at the Pratt Institute. "I'm so proud of her. She's been travelling a lot 'cause of the buzz from Sundance, but she still manages to teach our classes," he told me. The comment made me think of Erin, and how she manages to provide all her students with a fulfilling education despite the important industry work she does outside of school.

My greatest wish is that once this pandemic is over, Erin Greenwell is able to continue her filmmaking work - whether it be on The Weathergirl or something else - and gain more recognition for her thought-provoking art. She's someone who cares about giving invisible people a chance to be seen and heard. In these times of overwhelming change, those are the kinds of artists we need right now.