Robert Greene (filmmaker)

Greene was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. He received his bachelor's degree from North Carolina State University in 2000, majoring in Communication and Multidisciplinary Film Studies. He received his M.F.A. at City College of New York in Media Arts Studies. During his studies in New York he worked at Kim's Video. In 2002, Greene began working at 4th Row Films, starting as freelance editor. In 2004 he began working a full-time as a post-production supervisor. During this time, he worked with producers Douglas Tirola and Susan Bedusa on films including All In: The Poker Movie (2008), Making the Boys (2011), and An Omar Broadway Film (2008). While he was at 4th Row, Greene directed and produced Owning the Weather (2009) and Kati with an I (2010).

In 2011 he released Fake It So Real, his third feature as director, a documentary following a Lincolnton, North Carolina independent wrestling group over the week leading up to a big show.[3] In 2012 he left 4th Row Films to work on independent projects. In 2014 he directed Actress, a documentary about actress Brandy Burre as she attempts to return to her acting career after abandoning it to concentrate on raising a family.[4] In 2016 he directed Kate Plays Christine, a more experimental work[5] depicting actress Kate Lyn Sheil's preparations to portray the role of Christine Chubbuck, a real-life news reporter who took her own life on national television in 1974.

Green has worked with Sean Price Williams and Alex Ross Perry, having edited Perry's feature film Listen Up Philip,[6] as well as Amanda Rose Wilder's documentary Approaching the Elephant,[7] and Nick Berardini's Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle.[8] In 2015 Greene was appointed filmmaker-in-chief at the new Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO. He is also an assistant professor in their Journalism and Film Studies programs.

He is a writer, critic and reviewer, contributing regularly to Sight & Sound[9] as well as to other print and online publications including Filmmaker,[10] Criterion,[11] and Criticwire. Present Tense: Notes on American Nonfiction Cinema 1998-2013, his first book, is slated for release by The Critical Press for July 2015.[12]

Greene cites a variety of filmmakers and directors as influences for his work, including Frederick Wiseman, Albert and David Maysles, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard, John Cassavetes, and Kon Ichikawa. Greene has called Peter Watkins' Edvard Munch his favorite film of all time.[13]

For Actress, Greene was interested in Wiseman and Douglas Sirk for their mastery of visuals and definitive style, on how their influence could be incorporated in telling Burre's story.[14]