Though the Soho building that houses Zeitgeist Films, Ltd is unassuming—I personally found it only after becoming lost in Chinatown—the atmosphere indoors can only be described as healthy. Perhaps it is because I walked in on a party, but I’m willing to bet that their bright office is naturally full of vitality and spirit, not the least because Zeitgeist has grown fivefold in the past two decades. For almost three years, Emily Russo and Nancy Gerstman made up the entire staff of their company. Now the two have a staff of eight and can stop taking turns on the numerous and varied smaller tasks involved in owning an independent company to focus solely on new acquisitions, films that must rival those of Zeitgeist’s past in matter and form.

This isn’t to say that they don’t have their work cut out for them. Zeitgeist admits to providing for the “discriminating filmgoer,” and Nancy and Emily are themselves discriminating in this business. Taking only five films on a year, Zeitgeist is able to nurture and support films in a way no other company is able. Because of this, the two C.E.O.s can boast a slew of award-winning films—not only features, but documentaries and shorts as well. The company specializes in groundbreaking works by risk-taking filmmakers, constantly seeking out today’s voice. Says Emily: “We try to be as prescient as possible—I think our name and philosophy expresses that. We do really try to identify talent.” And while some of it is fortune, they are physically equipped to do so. “We work with great people and have an absolute fantastic, dedicated staff, and it all comes together to make something very special.”

Nancy agrees. “I think It’s also been a necessity for our business model to be in the business of finding new talent, because the reality is: once we discover the talent, they move on to make bigger films, and when they move on to make bigger films, we’re not always able to keep up with them because they’re going to the bigger studios, and larger companies for financing their larger projects, and they start to work with stars—it moves into another level where it’s hard for us to keep the distribution going with many of our filmmakers. Although in many cases emotionally we still feel involved with them, we are not, practically speaking, on a business level. So what we need to constantly be doing is looking for the new talents whose films are accessible to us—that’s been an area for us that is both our necessity and our ability to spot those people and make something of them.”

“We would be in a different business if we were to continue to distribute films of our filmmakers after they’d made it,” Emily continues “—we would have a different company. We wouldn’t be Zeitgeist.”

And at the end of June, the Museum of Modern Art is kicks of a retrospective of the career Zeitgeist Films has made of representing the era. There will be screenings and lectures with the likes of Todd Haynes, Yvonne Rainer, Atom Egoyan, and Guy Maddin—a few of the company’s many associates who will be honoring these two influential women and their devotion to quality cinema.

Emily and Nancy warmly invited me into Zeitgeist’s hub to talk about their past, future, and what it means for them always to be in the present.

How did you both find your way into this business—and how did you eventually form this company?

Nancy: I’m just a classic film lover who had jobs at movie theatres, and then I worked for a non-profit and then I worked for exhibitors—some of the largest in the country—and then I found myself in distribution and became head of theatrical sales for another company, and then Emily and I started Zeitgeist—basically, that’s my history.

Emily: I similarly had a great passion for film, which I discovered in college, and I graduated with a degree in cinema studies. I wrote my senior thesis about the Maysles brothers—even at that point I was keenly interested in and felt passionate about documentary. In terms of career, it took a while for me to find my way into distribution. I worked for a bit in production, P.A.-ing and working on film shoots, in both Europe and New York, and eventually I did land a job at a small distribution company—not the one Nancy worked for, but a friendly, competitive rival company that was doing similar films—and Nancy and I met each other, as we each had jobs in these two areas. Nancy, in fact, mentored me for a brief time in theatrical sales, and I took a position in my company as head of theatrical sales, eventually. After I left that company, and after Nancy left who she was working for, we were both pursuing new opportunities for ourselves; we looked at each other one day and said “why don’t we start our own thing together and do what we know how to do best?”—and that was starting our own distribution company, and that was the beginning of Zeitgeist Films. So we brought all our passions and histories and relationships with people in the business, and made one company.

How did you decide on the company’s name?

Emily: I had actually been living in Germany, and I was pretty fluent in German, and was looking for a name for my next venture. Zeitgeist was this name that came up over the dinner table at a German restaurant with my German friends, and we all agreed that Zeitgeist Films was the name to have, and when Nancy and I started to work together, I had already incorporated that name and she loved it, and we thought, “it really speaks to the type of thing we want to do, and what we think the company will be about.” So we took that name and ran with it. I would say it was a tough name at the beginning—it was hard to pronounce, no one knew what it meant, and we got a lot of questions about it and a lot of mispronunciations, but over time we’ve been borne out to have been very prescient with that name because it’s very much now part of the lexicon—I see it all the time now in headlines and billboards, and most people really do know what it means, at this point.
Nancy: And most people do really know how to pronounce it, at this point!

Your commitment to “the discriminating filmgoer” is nobly impressive, but MovieMaker also posits that you pick up “works that might be overlooked or avoided by other companies”—do you think that other companies would turn down the films you have taken on?

Nancy: Well, not at this point! We are discriminating filmgoers and we have been choosy about the films that we take. Especially in the beginning, when documentaries and niche cinema really didn’t have a home, we were really there to take on films. A film that would be considered as mainstream as Let’s Get Lost, the documentary about Chet Baker, was a film that a lot of companies would have passed on at the time (this is the late ’80s). Anything that became the new queer cinema, companies were not interested in—and really it was the same for any niche documentary or feature that was not really that well-known or well-appreciated, so Zeitgeist had a niche to fill. We only took on five films a year, which is what we do now, and we put so much energy and attention into those films, another way that we distinguished ourselves: we put an enormous amount of attention and marketing and interest into these films that other companies just would not have been able to handle effectively, and we did a good job. Once a film is successful, hindsight is the best sight, and a lot of companies say “we could have done that film and we could have released it and we could have made money with it” but they didn’t, Zeitgeist did. That’s true for films as mainstream as Nowhere in Africa, which every single company has passed on, but which eventually won an academy award and made 6.2 million dollars: many companies could say “we could have taken that film” but they didn’t, Zeitgeist did.

Why have you chosen so many documentaries? Is it just a reflection of that haute cinema taste, of your “discriminating” sensibilities?

Nancy: Documentaries have always been a great interest of ours, and there are fabulous, wonderful documentaries out there; our business is a very cyclical business, so sometimes there are years when there are better documentaries than other years. Documentaries were not always this super-popular genre; for years there was this—I wouldn’t call it a glass ceiling, but there was a ceiling of how much a documentary could make. When we first started, documentaries were never able to make more than half-a-million dollars, so many of the larger companies were just not interested, and to Zeitgeist, of course, half-a-million was a lot, so we were willing to take on risky documentaries. There was a point, maybe a couple of years ago—especially when Michael Moore started—when documentaries really started to get out there, and so documentaries were hard to acquire, and at the time we were able to acquire some, but maybe not as high-profile documentaries as we had been doing. Now the cycle has come back; documentaries don’t make the millions that they were making, but they do fine, and there are excellent and fantastic documentaries, and so this year and last we have probably taken more.

Emily: We also feel that, for us, since we are a niche company and our titles are niche titles, it works for us: documentaries have a niche audience. There’s special interest there, there’s an identifiable audience.

Nancy: It’s almost easier to find an audience for certain types of documentaries than it is for a general feature film that’s a broader thing. We’re attracted to the form and we’re attracted to the content, and we’re attracted to the message: we want to do all that, but we also feel, realistically, that we have the tools to market it with, things that might make it easier for us to work with a doc than a feature.

What’s it like to be women in the film industry?

Nancy: Rare! As far as we can tell, we are the only women-owned independent distribution company—or non-independent distribution company—in the U.S. Certainly women have very significant jobs in distribution companies, but I don’t think they really own the company, and therefore they don’t have the ultimate power in the company. Emily and I have the luxury of being able to make decisions and not having to go to somebody else to get the okay to take on things or do what we want to do. That said, we sort of live in our own universe; because there are two of us, because we support each other, we don’t feel the terrible pressure that I think a lot of women do in this industry. It’s also not the easiest thing in the world to be the only women dealing with their own company, though it’s totally worth it.

Emily: I would say that the industry is, in many ways, a bit of a boys’ club, that it’s just a coterie of men that revolves around the same jobs and is consistently and always quoted—that there’s a talking-hand type representing the landscape. In that sense I think we feel a little awkward; that’s something going on that we’re not part of. I’ve enjoyed being a woman in film: I enjoy mentoring other women; I would love other women to be doing what we do, and I think it’s an incredible thing to be able to do it, despite the fact that it’s a boys’ club—we’re like a girls’ club! We’re into having other women around and having other women learn what we’ve learned.

Nancy: And there are organizations like Women in Film, and there are areas where women can take some strength in who they are in this industry and prove what they have to offer.

How does it feel to be celebrating Zeitgeist’s 20th Anniversary?

Nancy: It feels pretty good, actually! I think it feels like we can look back and see all that we have accomplished, at the huge breadth and depth to our catalogue, at the progress that we’ve made, the changes that have taken place over the years, as gradual as they have been…but twenty years is a long time. It really has added up to something: we have a big staff and nice offices, and we have a great catalogue and lots of new projects that we’re working to bring out, that are very exciting to us. So there’s a feeling of both looking back and celebrating that, which is, I think, what the MoMA retrospective is about for us, and then it’s also really about looking forward to the next two decades—or more—to where we’re going to go with the base that we have and are operating now, and we’re in a great position.

What was your favorite project?

Emily: It’s very, very hard to say what our favorite project is, because every project has a certain flavor—they’re so different because we have such an eclectic taste. It’s really like saying “Who’s your favorite child?”

Nancy: We’ve been proud of all of our films. We love the ones that are successful because of what their success means to us, and what it means to us and to our company, but there are ones that have not been particularly successful box-office extravaganzas, that have made us really very happy to distribute, so it’s really hard to say a favorite; it’s a tough word.

The Alpha Five:

1. Name one piece of work—novel, painting, movie, etc.—that really influenced/motivated you. Explain how/why.

Emily: The documentary film Salesman from the Maysles Brothers. This incredible portrait of some Bible salesman struggling to make a living was just such a revelation for me when I saw it in film school. It made me appreciate the power of film, particularly of documentary film, to reveal truths and realities with great artistry. And I think at some level I just identified with the struggle these men had with their own personalities and egos and their very difficult and particular career calling. This film has never dated for me.

Nancy: Although I grew up in a film-loving home and was always watching movies in
theatres and on TV, I would have to say that my world was shaken by a screening of L’Avventura while I was a freshman in college. I had never seen a film work so brilliantly on so many levels at once and it immediately took me to another level in my film appreciation. It solidified a respect for the maverick, willing to take risks to create something potentially great. This admiration has stayed with me to such an extent that I've looked for a similar dedication in all of the films we've acquired for Zeitgeist.

2. What is the biggest challenge/obstacle you have encountered thus far?

Emily: Having enough capital to take some bigger risks. We have wanted to remain so independent and not have to answer to anybody, that we've really shunned taking on investors (not that they've beaten down our door, but there have been opportunities, we just haven't wanted what comes with the deals). But this has certainly limited our growth opportunities, kept us small (maybe a good thing). It's a conflict/challenge for us still, you see by my answer!

Nancy: On a work level, it's having started a business on so little capital and trying to maintain our independence but not having investors. It all depends on us and sometimes that is a huge pressure. On a personal level the biggest challenge is having a balanced life and not becoming obsessed by details that could be handled by someone else.

3. What is your biggest regret?

Emily: I'm pretty lucky that I don't really have any major one. We passed on a few films we could have had that went on to make a lot of money, such as the early Aardman animated shorts. We just didn't care for them, but when they did that well, I thought, “I could have liked them enough….”

Nancy: I'm not a person who regrets—I think that everyone makes mistakes but that they have to move on, try to learn from their choices—not dwell in the might-have-been.

4. Describe what you envision your life to be like in 10 years—what has changed, what has stayed the same?

Emily: I hope I'll still be running the company with my partner Nancy. My kids will be teenagers, and that will provide a lot of new challenges, I'm sure. I'll be 60, so hopefully even wiser and more seasoned a person than I am today. I hope the world will have changed to a more peaceful and less troubled place.

Nancy: I want to be a healthy, vital senior citizen (with my husband the same) in 10 years; I still want to be running Zeitgeist with Emily, and I want to speak fluent French by then!

5. What is the one piece of advice that you feel has been the most valuable to you and which you would like to pass on to others?

Emily: I don't know if anyone gave me this advice, but I somehow knew it to be true...you have to do what you love. And you have to keep at something, if you are enjoying it and getting something out of it that satisfies you. So, don't give up, and choose what makes you happy. Everything else follows....

Nancy: I've been too independent to take much advice about my career choice and I've been very, very lucky to be able to work at what I love most. So I guess my advice would be to maintain whatever independence you can while working at something you love.

The MoMA retrospective lasts from June 26 to July 23. Go to http://www.MoMA.org for more information and a list of screenings (http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/film_exhibitions.p...)
You can also learn more about Zeitgeist Films, their history, and their projects at http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com –and look out for blog posts!