Froemke is the chief administrator and principal filmmaker of world-renowned Maysles Films in New York. She has been a disciple of "direct cinema," a style of filmmaking created in the 1960s by the late David Maysles and his brother Albert, since joining Maysles Films Inc. at the start of her career. Like "cinema verité" in France, direct cinema presents the drama of real life as it unfolds, with minimal intervention. Froemke's tremendous range as a filmmaker can be seen in the diversity of her subjects. She directed several co-productions between Maysles Films Inc. and Sony Classical, including OZAWA (1985), VLADIMIR HOROWITZ: THE LAST ROMANTIC (1985) - which won two Emmys, HOROWITZ PLAYS MOZART (1986), SOLDIERS OF MUSIC: ROSTROPOVICH RETURNS TO RUSSIA (1991) - winning a third Emmy, and BAROQUE DUET (1992) - featuring Kathleen Battle and Wynton Marsalis. All premiered on PBS.
Froemke produced and directed CHRISTO IN PARIS (1990), which won the Amsterdam Film Festival's Grand Prize, the Chicago Film Festival's Golden Hugo and the Cinematography Prize at Sundance. Her updated version of THE BEATLES! THE FIRST U.S. VISIT (1991) was voted Entertainment Weekly's "Video of the Year." Froemke's half-hour documentary CONVERSATIONS WITH THE ROLLING STONES aired on VH-1 in 1994 and was nominated for a CableACE Award. CONCERT OF WILLS: MAKING THE GETTY CENTER (1997), her film on the enormous Los Angeles arts complex designed by the renowned architect Richard Meier, was twelve years in the making, and called by The New York Times "a fine and painstaking work of art."
In 1992 Froemke produced and directed ABORTION: DESPERATE CHOICES, capturing the haunting reality of the human experience of an unplanned pregnancy with politics taking a backseat. It earned her an Emmy, a Peabody Award and a duPont-Columbia Award. Her film LETTING GO: A HOSPICE JOURNEY (1996), about coping with the inevitability of death, creates an understanding of the hospice movement -- physical, emotional and spiritual assistance to terminally ill people and their families.
LALEE'S KIN (2001) is a powerful exploration of poverty and education in the Mississippi Delta; it was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary category, and also for an Independent Feature Project Spirit Award. LALEE'S KIN was named one of the five Best Documentaries of 2001 by David Ansen in Newsweek (January 14, 2002).
Nominated for Achievement in Documentary Features 2001: LALEE'S KIN: THE LEGACY OF COTTON - Producer (w. Deborah Dickson)
1 nomination