Frederick Marx

The film will show us how historically all major cultures and religions have had their own rites of passage. The film will show us the price we pay as a society for not initiating our teens. Communities are answering the call by co-creating their own functional rites of passage today. We will see real families who’ve been struck by the horrors and crimes of youth and how they’re repairing themselves and their neighborhoods. Finally, it will not only show us teens themselves who’ve been transformed by rites of passage, but how their metamorphosis has revolutionized their relations with family and friends, teachers and bosses, creating positive changes rippling across homes, schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, cities and farms across the planet.

Journey From Zanskar tells the emotional story of 17 small children who leave home and family, possibly forever, in order to save their dying Tibetan culture. Parting from one of the most remote and desolate places on Earth – Zanskar, in northwest India – the expedition must travel on foot over 17,000 foot Himalayan passes. The two monks serving as guides walked this same path 30 years ago when they were children. Written, produced, and directed by Frederick Marx, narrated by Richard Gere, featuring the Dalai Lama, the film tells the story of their incredible journey. Distributed in France by Jupiter films, Frederick Marx is currently self-distributing Journey From Zanskar in the United States through his non-profit company Warrior Films.

Frederick Marx's film Hoop Dreams played in hundreds of theatres nationwide after winning the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was the first documentary ever chosen to close the New York Film Festival. It was on over 100 "Ten Best" lists nationwide and was named Best Film of the Year by Roger Ebert. Ebert also named it Best Film of the Decade. It was named the Best Documentary of All Time by the International Documentary Association. In 2005 it was added to the US Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. It won many major international awards – the Producers Guild of America (PGA), the Motion Picture Editors Guild (MPEG), the Peabody Award, the National Society of Film Critics (NSFC), Prix Italia, and the Robert F. Kennedy Special Achievement Award.

Frederick Marx is a film producer/director. He was named a Chicago Tribune Artist of the Year for 1994, a 1995 Guggenheim Fellow, and a recipient of a Robert F. Kennedy Special Achievement Award. Frederick Marx achieved international fame for a film he co-wrote Hoop Dreams with Steve James the director of the film. It is one of the highest grossing non-musical documentaries in United States history.

Hoop Dreams (1994) is the film that first interested Marx in the welfare of teenage boys. Boys to Men? (2004), distributed by Media Education Foundation, takes that as its central theme. Boys Become Men, now in production, is the sequel, pinpointing initiation and mentorship as the solutions to the problems teen boys face.

In 1993, Marx received an Emmy nomination for Higher Goals (1992) for Best Daytime Children's Special. Producer, Director, and Writer for this national PBS Special, Marx directed Tim Meadows of Saturday Night Live fame. Accompanied by a curriculum guide, the program was later distributed for free to over 4,200 inner city schools nationwide. The Unspoken (1999), Marx's first feature film, features performances from Russian star Sergei Shnirev of the famed Moscow Art Theatre, and Harry Lennix, most known for Get on the Bus, Bob Roberts, Titus, ER, and The Matrix.

With a B.A. in Political Science and an MFA in filmmaking from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Marx has coupled his formal education with a natural gift for languages, speaking German and some Mandarin-Chinese. His interest in languages and foreign cultures is reflected in PBS' international human rights program Out of the Silence (1991), the widely acclaimed personal essay Dreams from China (1989), and Learning Channel's Saving the Sphinx (1997). He consulted on Iranian-Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi's feature Turtles Can Fly (2004) and was a teacher of renowned Thai feature filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

A hobbyist songwriter, in 1991 Marx recorded a number of his songs collectively known as Rolling Steel. Two of those 11 songs are used over The Unspoken (1999) tail credits and one is used in Boys to Men.

Marx graduated from the University of Illinois Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois in 1973.