Biography

Gwen Wynne, a member of the Directors Guild of America, is a Director, Producer, Documentarian, Screenwriter and Stage Director. She champions untold stories, new talent and emphasizes marginalized narratives to inspire action and change through her production companies, Apricot Films and Cape Cod Films.

Wynne's latest project is MOST SECRET: AGENT 0017 an original spy drama for episodic television based on the true efforts of Churchill's Secret Operations Executive (S.O.E.) and his intelligence agents - women and men - an unusual ragtag bunch of warriors.

Since 2003, Wynne has been interviewing and filming World War II Secret Agents in England and France. Wynne secured permission from Buckingham Palace and MI6 to film secret ceremonies for the World War II heroes such as the 70th anniversary honoring Churchill's creation of the S.O.E.

Personalities and events already filmed in MOST SECRET include the World's greatest living explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Princess Anne, French resistance veterans gathering in the countryside of France, Ambassadors throughout Europe marking the birth of S.O.E., the Louvre, and national French treasure Frederique Hebrard. Frederique, now a famous French author and actress, as a little girl famously slept with Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa because her curator parents led a cabal of museum officials to remove priceless masterpieces out of the Louvre to hide from the Nazis.

Wynne directed her first feature film about two daughters coping with their father's decision to pursue a gay lifestyle circa 1973: AMERICAN PRIMITIVE (aka WILD ABOUT HARRY). The Huffington Post's Tom Gregory describes the movie: "an indie gem... the 'why' that drove early activists like Harvey Milk and the Stonewall demonstrators to demand equality..."

Wynne produced and originated the documentary TYRUS with the director Pamela Tom; it's national broadcast on PBS's American Masters in September, 2017 told the unlikely story of Tyrus Wong, a Chinese immigrant becoming Hollywood's greatest concept artist ever. Unknown to most, Tyrus Wong created the 'look' for classics such as THE WILD BUNCH, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, MILDRED PIERCE, BAMBI and many more.

In 2018, Wynne's production company, Apricot Films, launched a new Global initiative, the EOS WORLD FUND, to support female directors and minorities by financing their movies. EOS WORLD FUND seeks to nurture and produce both known & emerging female filmmakers including other marginalized artists from around the world that are pursuing visual storytelling through cinema and other forms of visual expression. On the heels of #TimesUp, Eos World Fund is aiming directly at the complex knot of abuse in the industry, and addressing the dearth of women and minorities throughout the cinematic and visual arts, despite there being a multitude of trained and talented women and men around the world.

At Sundance 2018 Gwen Wynne's EOS World Fund, LLC announced its first recipients for EOS funding: the auteur, pioneering filmmakers Nina Menkes [QUEEN OF DIAMONDS] and Julie Dash [DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST]. In 1991 Nina Menkes and Julie Dash presented these world premieres at Sundance. The new feature films created by these two audacious directors will be Nina Menkes' thriller MINOTAUR REX set in contemporary Jerusalem, both a thriller and an allegory for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict & Julie Dash's sci-fi thriller CYPHER, a film noir, suspense thriller set in Manhattan.

Emblematic of Gwen's career is one of her first professional stage productions; she developed and directed one of the first rap musicals produced in America, SANCTUARY, D.C. by Ralph Brown and composed by Scott Davenport Richards about runaways, crack, and homelessness. An underdog hit, Wynne and her Washington, D.C. theatre company were nominated for three HELEN HAYES AWARDS including Best New Musical.

Ms. Wynne began her career at CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE on Broadway, looking for musicals and dramas, then later became Artistic Director, leading an award-winning professional theatre company she co-founded with Helen Patton in Washington, D.C., The No-Neck Monsters Theatre Company. Nominated by the Helen Hayes Awards and given special recognition for its drama program by Hillary Clinton for-at-risk-youth, Wynne's productions and programming were funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Comic Relief among others.

Other plays and productions included Bloomsbury Publishing's acclaimed British novelist Stuart Browne's ANGEL an epic drama capturing the political and environmental upheaval of the 20th century first developed by Joint Stock Theatre Co. in London.

Wynne's theatre company cast emerging talent (like Jeffrey Wright before his Tony winning starring role in ANGELS IN AMERICA on Broadway) in classic, rarely produced plays like Tennessee Williams' KINGDOM OF EARTH.

Wynne also created a successful Drama Program under the No-Neck Monsters direction, THEATRE OF YOUTH for at-risk youth in inner city Washington, D.C. in conjunction with other not-for-profits fighting against homelessness and drug abuse. There she taught directing and acting. One of the program's teachers received an award from Hillary Rodham Clinton at the White House for providing outstanding leadership in the community.

Wynne received her B.A. from Brown University and M.F.A. from USC's School of Cinematic Arts.
- IMDb mini biography by: Gwen Wynne