Filmmaker Michie Gleason has been awarded SSB AWAY’s 2019 residency with a proposal to research a screenplay on the life of Balthus, the controversial artist, in Tuscany, where he experienced his deepest inspiration through the works of Piero della Francesca.
“Balthus’ approach to women has always been provocative, but never more so than today, in the midst of growing awareness of women’s struggle for equality,” she says. “Telling the story of this particular artist and his models in a way that humanizes every character is a means to explore and shed light on a complex, incendiary subject.”
Last year, The New York Times reported about an online petition asking the Metropolitan Museum of Art to reimagine how they present Balthus’ Thérèse Dreaming. Almost instantly, they had more than 10,000 signatures. The Met did not agree to add any more detail about the artist’s orientation or approach. “Balthus is controversial,” says Gleason. “It may be complicated to contextualize his work in an art museum, but not in a movie.”
Gleason’s work is at the intersection of the personal and the political, and her feature films have told stories of independent women, and people whose lives have been determined—in many cases upended—by history and politics.
Michie Gleason is a filmmaker and writer based in Los Angeles. Her feature credits as writer and director include The Island of the Mapmaker’s Wife, filmed in Amsterdam; Summer Heat, filmed in and around Tarboro, North Carolina; and Broken English, filmed in Paris, France and Dakar, Senegal. She directed a documentary about women in prison entitled We’re Alive and co-produced ADWA, a documentary about Ethiopia for director Haile Gerima. Her most recent writing credits include her adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel Soldiers’ Pay.