Kimberly Peirce
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Kimberly Peirce (born September 8, 1967), is an American film director, notable for her debut feature, Boys Don't Cry (1999). Her second feature, Stop-Loss, has been released by Paramount Pictures on March 28, 2008 in the USA and in Canada.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and career
Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Peirce grew up in a trailer park.[citation needed] She graduated from Miami Sunset High School in Miami, Florida and attended the University of Chicago,[1] earning a degree in English and Japanese Literature.[citation needed] She moved for several years to Kobe, Japan, working as a photographer and model.[citation needed] Upon returning to America, she enrolled at Columbia University,[1] earning an MFA in film.[1] Initially, Peirce pursued a story about a female soldier in drag during the American Civil War for her thesis,[citation needed] but eventually nixed the plan due to a lack of personal connection with the story.[citation needed]
While attending Columbia, Peirce read a Village Voice article[citation needed] about Brandon Teena, a transman raped and murdered in Falls City, Nebraska.[1] Switching from her original thesis project, Peirce traveled to Falls City, where she researched and attended the trial of the two homicide suspects.[1] The subsequent film short she made for her thesis in 1995 was nominated by Columbia faculty for a Princess Grace Award, and received an Astrea Production Grant.[1] That grant and her involvement with the Sundance Institute;'s 1997 Sundance Filmmakers, Writers and Producers Labs helped her develop the short into the 1999 feature film Boys Don't Cry.[1]
[edit] Later life and career
Since then, she has directed an episode of the Showtime television series The L Word, and the Paramount Pictures feature Stop-Loss, (2008).
Canceled projects she worked on in the interim included co-writing the script Silent Star, about the murder of silent movie director William Desmond Taylor, for the studio DreamWorks; a David Mamet script she would direct about gangster John Dillinger; directing the adaptation of author Dave Eggers' memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; and research for a Columbia Pictures film she would direct about the execution of the Israeli spy Eli Cohen.[2]
As of 2008, Peirce was co-writing a feature title Sex, Secrets and Taboo in Suburbia,[1] a romantic comedy with a "gender twist",[1] and a New Orleans gangster movie.[1] As of April 2008, Peirce lives with lesbian partner Evren Savci, "a Ph.D. candidate writing a double theses on gender and sexuality and Turkish modernization".[3]
[edit] Filmography
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- Leopard of Tomorrow Program at 1994 Locarno International Film Festival[1]
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- Boys Don't Cry (1999) (director & writer)
- The L Word (2006) (director - 1 episode, TV series)
- Stop-Loss (2008) (director & writer)
[edit] Awards
- Second place, Canada International Film Festival - "The Last Good Breath"[1]
- Golden Award, Experiment Division, Chicago International Film Festival - "The Last Good Breath" [1]
- First place, Suffolk Film Festival[1]
- Best Debut Director - National Board of Review[1]
- Best New Filmmaker - Boston Society of Film Critics[1]
