Margaret (Margie) Smilow

Margaret Smilow’s career and long-time association with Japan began with a
fortuitous meeting with a Japanese director when she was nineteen.
She was introduced to one of the founders and director of TV MAN UNION,
who was searching for a coordinator to handle the NYC portion of the filming
of a two-hour docudrama*. TV MAN UNION was the first independent
production company in Japan with a unique company system based on
membership, a company that was innovating new ways to present culture and
arts through the medium of television.

After successfully completing her assignment, she traveled to Japan hoping to
do more work with this company and although they were not able to work
together at that time, they recognized her potential and kindred spirit and
introduced her to other production entities and she produced and appeared in a
Japanese production マージーの夏休み (Margie’s Summer Vacation) for one of
the local TV stations.

Returning to the United States, she founded Alternate Current and became
the US location producer for many TV MAN UNION projects. She expanded
her collaborative reach to Europe to co-produce music programs with Idéale
Audience and Bel Air Media, French companies with high artistic standards
specializing in music programs and with public broadcasters in the UK, France
and Japan.

Smilow’s music projects subsequently caught the eye of WNET**, the local
public television station that produced culture and arts series for the PBS
network such as American Masters and Great Performances, and she was
invited to head the Culture and Arts Documentary unit there.

Most notable among Smilow’s numerous projects were the programs that
explored the collaboration between composer and film director. The series
Music for the Movies, examined the works of four international composers,
(Bernard Hermann (Psycho-Alfred Hitchcock, Citizen Cane- Orson Welles, On
Dangerous Ground-Nicholas Ray, and Taxi Driver-Martin Scorsese), Toru
Takemitsu (Ran-Akira Kurosawa, Double Suicide - Masahiro Shinoda, Face of
Another- Hiroshi Teshigahara and Empire of Passion-Nagisa Oshima),
Georges Delerue (Jules et Jim, Le Nuit Americaine-François Truffaut, Salvador,
Platoon-Oliver Stone) and Zhao Jiping  (To Live, Raise the Red Lantern,Red
Sorghum-Zhang Yimou, Farewell My Concubine-Chen Kaige). She then went on
to highlight the contributions to Hollywood musicals with The Hollywood
Sound, The Arthur Freed Unit at MGM and Busby Berkeley: Going Through the
Roof.

Another major Smilow music project while at WNET was with the pianist and
conductor Daniel Barenboim in collaboration with Bel Air Media. In 2005,
Daniel Barenboim performed the complete Beethoven piano sonatas over 8
concerts in 2 weeks at the Staatsoper in Berlin. All eight concerts, 32 sonatas
were recorded live. The project also recorded Barenboim masterclasses with
Saleem Abboud Ashkar, Alessio Bax, Jonathan Biss, David Kadouch, Lang Lang,
and Shai Wosner in Chicago. This project generated a six DVD box set of the
complete Beethoven Sonatas, another 2-set DVD of the masterclasses as well
as a TV documentary, Barenboim on Beethoven.
Alternate Current projects were also groundbreaking. TransAmerica Ultra
Quiz, an annual special produced by TV MAN UNION for the Japanese network
Nippon Television airing from 1977 to 1992, is a Jeopardy-like traveling road
show elimination quiz program that begins in Japan with 10,000 contestants;
the quiz conducted at various locations in the United States (in National Parks
and other attractions) culminating (at that time) at the top of the Pan Am
building in New York City where the last two participants vie for the honor of
"king/queen,” only to be awarded with a spectacular albeit bogus prize.
TransAmerica Ultra Quiz was the forerunner of most of the reality programs
(Survivor) that are immensely popular to this day.

On the technology front, Alternate Current was one of the first production
companies to shoot in Hi-definition in the United States in collaboration with
NHK, the Japanese public broadcaster, a pioneer in Hi-Definition technology.
For the opening ceremony of the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, Seiji Ozawa
conducted choruses from five continents singing “Ode to Joy” linked
simultaneously by satellite, symbolizing the interlocking Olympic rings.
Alternate Current was responsible for the live satellite feed from the General
Assembly of the United Nations. In order to overcome the time-lag normally
associated with satellite transmission so that the choruses on all five
continents could sing in unison to the baton of Seiji Ozawa in Nagano, special
technology devised in Japan was implemented.

Smilow is the recipient of many awards in both the United States and Europe.
Notable is the Primetime Emmy Award in 1999 for Itzhak Perlman: Fiddling for
The Future, a 2003 Peabody Award for Degas and the Dance and a Pariscience
Int’l Film Festival Grand Prix for Best Film in 2009 for The Music Instinct. She was
also an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature for Music for the Movies:
Bernard Hermann.

*Read Yutaka Shigenobu’s recollection of his first meeting with Margaret Smilow in
his tribute
**Read Jac Venza’s (Director of PBS cultural programs at WNET) tribute