Marteene G. Diaz
I'm Josette's granddaughter. After my grandfather passed in 2019, my Nonni — for the first time since she was 17 — got to live life on her own terms. She moved into an independent living community and blossomed. Actually, "blossomed" is too conservative. Her first years there looked a lot like an 18-year-old moving away to college, and I was the gal pal she'd call to spill the tea.
During those visits, I realized this setting, these people, this story had more legs than anyone knew what to do with. These women were determined to live as fast as they could with whatever time they had left. Some of their advice was beautiful. Some of it — the mummy tummy notes — I left behind. But the parts about freedom, living without hesitation, and the importance of community? That's the good shit to live by.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus said it best on her podcast Wiser Than Me: "FUCKING LISTEN TO OLDER WOMEN." I couldn't agree more.
Golden Groves is for women who lived under the weight of patriarchy in ways I'll never fully understand. Who sacrificed their own desires for husbands, children, and roles they never asked for. It's for them, for me, and for every woman who's ever been treated like a commodity.
It's about living fully and without apology — at any age.
Bio
Marteene is a director, editor and producer (by necessity) from Hollywood, FL… there’s a pun there somewhere. She grew up in a house full of music – her father is a Grammy Award-winning mix engineer, her mom a devoted concert-goer – and those creative roots found their way into film. She went on to earn an MA in Film & Media Studies from the University of Denver. Her creative voice lives in two places that are really just one: idealized, comedic, slightly sparkly worlds that sneak real issues in through the back door (think The Birdcage) and work that faces sensitive topics head-on. Frequently sought as an editor, she has worked on a number of series and promotional spots for major networks like Starz and NBCUniversal. And most importantly, Marteene’s wife and daughter are quite literally the foundation of her life's work.
Eric Todd Patton
Bio
Eric is a writer-director-producer from Denver, Colorado. As a lifelong cinephile, his obsession with movies led him, inevitably, to an MFA in Directing from Chapman University. He's most drawn to stories that oscillate between comedy and tragedy, much like real life.
His professional work spans all areas of production, with recent credits in Post Production on Amazon's Mozart in the Jungle, FX's Snowfall, and Mercy Street at Scott Free. Throughout, he's continued to write, direct, and produce his own work; including the award-winning short comedies Kosher Pig and Loaf of Bread. His feature comedy Mildred's Cherokee reached the top 20% of the Nicholl Fellowship, and his one-hour pilot Saint-Michel is a finalist in the ScreenCraft TV Pilot Competition.
He has two kids, Boston and Rhys, who received a thorough film education from an early age. He considers it a parenting win that his daughter once informed her class that the definitive Macbeth is Kurosawa's Throne of Blood.