Los Angeles, California, United States
Mary Gerretsen is an award-winning filmmaker whose stories aim to find the joys of life in even the most tragic sides of humanity. The youngest of four to Beatnik filmmakers, when she wasn’t dreaming up stories in her bed under the stairs in the basement (before Harry Potter made it cool), she was drawing, playing music, writing stories, and running around her neighborhood in Toronto. As whimsical and quirky as her life seemed, she was never far from tragedy. Her mother suffered four aneurysms and a stroke and was partially handicapped since she was four years old, and when she was barely out of school, both her parents tragically passed away within years of each other. She would follow in her parents’ footsteps, graduating with a degree in Film Studies from Ryerson University and pursuing a career in film and television in Toronto, where she produced, directed, shot, and edited for television shows and music videos. She later went on to attend the USC’s Graduate Production Program, where she directed documentary films that tackle the notion of finding joy in the face of death. Those, along with her narrative short, have received over a dozen awards and were accepted into more than fifty film festivals collectively. Since graduating, she has continued to direct, produce, shoot, and edit on various long and short-form documentaries and narrative films, including serving as Second-Unit Director of Photography on AMAZON's KINGS OF BEER and Editor on an upcoming feature documentary, TRANS*FORMED. She is currently in production directing and shooting a documentary feature about the life of a man dying from prostate cancer as well as a documentary series called TRUE. TALK. DOCS. - A socially conscious series to help people feel like they are not alone in their struggles. Links to her site and Resume are provided below.
TRUE. TALK. DOCS. are small videos that tackle big emotions. Founded by Award-Winning filmmaker, Mary Gerretsen—whose stories aim to find joy and hope even in the most tragic sides of humanity—each doc highlights people doing something they love—painting, skating, singing, cooking—as they reveal the hardest moments in their lives surrounding circumstances we don’t talk about freely, like death, homelessness, divorce, suicidal ideation, missed opportunities, destructive habits, radical politics and racism. This series brings awareness to those things we bury deep or hide from others (especially on social media), while highlighting those achievements that we feel more comfortable sharing. People are complex. The world is complicated. And too often we are made to feel isolated in our pain, only celebrated in our joy. TRUE. TALK. DOCS. is a series that shows: while we all carry our individual burdens, we don’t have to do so alone.
I made two short documentaries during Covid19 that were licensed and featured on SoulPancake's Facebook page. (link below)
Continuing a Legacy follows a single season of a black cowgirl in the junior rodeo.
Kings of Beer is a documentary about a diverse group of elite Brewmasters from around the globe, who compete in the world's most intense brewing competition for Budweiser. Available on Amazon.