Christine Fugate (born 1964) is an American

film director A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, p ...

of documentary films, writer, and professor of film at

Chapman University Chapman University is a private research university in Orange, California. It encompasses ten schools and colleges, including Fowler School of Engineering, Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Fowler School of Law, and Schmid College of Scie ...

. Fugate is known for her

documentaries A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in term ...

and independent films. She is also a

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

, interviewer, and author of ''Mothering Heights'', a column which was published in the ''Laguna Beach Independent''. In 2008, she edited a collection of essays by women sharing diverse perspectives on the same subject, ''The Mothering Heights Manual for Motherhood, Volume I''.

Life

Fugate was born in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. She completed a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...

Asian film Asian cinema refers to the Film industry, film industries and films produced in the continent of Asia. However, in countries like the United States, it is often used to refer only to the cinema of East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. West Asi ...

and theater at the

University of Hawaiʻi The University of Hawaiʻi System, formally the University of Hawaiʻi and popularly known as UH, is a public college and university system that confers associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees through three universities, seven com ...

, and her thesis, ''The Power to Choose: Women in Thai Film, 1975–1990'', is on file at the university's library. She returned to Los Angeles in the nineties to begin her work as a filmmaker.

Career

Fugate began her career in 1990 as French director

Barbet Schroeder Barbet Schroeder (born 26 August 1941) is an Iranian-born Swiss film director and producer who started his career in French cinema in the 1960s, working with directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette. Since the late 1980s, he has dire ...

's assistant for the film, '' Single White Female''. Subsequently, she worked as Creative Vice President for Pacific Rim Productions where she was an Associate Producer on the

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

film, ''Natural Causes','' in 1994. In the late 1990s, Fugate produced and directed a series of independent films, including ''The Southern Sex'' (1992), ''Mother Love'' (1996), ''Tobacco Blues'' (1998) and ''The Girl Next Door'' (1999). Fugate rendered the poetry of writer

Donna Hilbert Donna Hilbert (born June 25, 1946) is an American poet who also writes short stories, plays, and essays. She was a founding member of the Progressive Dinner Party in Long Beach, California, and she is also known for her commitment to progress ...

for the screen in ''Grief Becomes Me'' (2005), which premiered at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference and at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival. Fugate went on to create a biopic connecting Hilbert's life and work, titled ''Grief Becomes Me: A Love Story'' (2009).

Filmography

*''The Southern Sex'' (1992) *''Mother Love'' (1996) *'' Tobacco Blues'' (1998) * ''The Girl Next Door'' (1999) *''Grief Becomes Me'' (Short Film) (2006) *''Grief Becomes Me: A Love Story'' (2009)

References

External links

Official Website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fugate, Christine 1964 births Living people 21st-century American women American documentary filmmakers American women journalists Writers from Lexington, Kentucky University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni Journalists from California Writers from Kentucky American women film directors Filmmakers from Kentucky Film directors from Los Angeles Film directors from Kentucky American women documentary filmmakers