Bill Gunn

The Philadelphia-born playwright, novelist, actor and director Bill Gunn wrote more than 29 plays, two novels and several produced screenplays. He studied acting with Mira Rostova in New York in 1950 and appeared on Broadway in The Immoralist in 1954. He won an Emmy Award in 1972 for the drama Johnnas. His directorial debut, Stop!, was financed by Warner Bros. in 1970 but shelved by the studio before release. He directed the horror film Ganja & Hess (1973), which was selected at Cannes as one of the decade's ten best American films, and he acted in Kathleen Collins's Losing Ground (1982). The film critic Richard Brody described him as a visionary filmmaker who worked at the sidelines of American filmmaking, and Spike Lee called him one of the most under-appreciated directors of his era.