Gingi Rochelle, a Los Angeles Native with a New York personality began her career working on ABC's number 1 television series of Family Matters as a studio tutor for Jaleel White, Darius McClary, and Kelly S. Williams.
During hiatus for the show, she traveled to Brooklyn, New York to see what's it's like outside of Los Angeles, where she landed a job with Brooklyn's own Spike Lee. She was granted the position of director of Product placement for the infamous "Malcolm X" starring Denzel Washington and Angela Basset. Saving production over 380,000 in products she landed quite a reputation in New York. Immediately afterwards she was called to do such films as "Cyberstorm" with Christina Applegate and James Marshall and "Six Degree's of Separation" starring Stockard Channing and Will Smith.
Continuously wanted to learn more and stay stimulated, she shifts gears again and decided to work on set from the bottom to find out what's it all about. Starting with "Crooklyn" as a production assistant, then to Above the Rim starring Tupac, Duane Martin and Leon and Spike Lee's New Jersey drive co-production by the shooting Gallery, soon later she was a house hold name in the world of production where she quickly moved up to Assistant Director for Spike Lee's" Clockers", Academy award nominated "Tuesday Morning Ride" starring Ruby Dee and directed by Television writer/director Dianne Houston. She was assistant director on numerous commercials, television movies, music videos and many other New York Productions.
While doing this Gingi Rochelle used her contacts and product placement background to produce short and independent films. She co-produced award winning "Dread Knight Folk" for Erik Knight that premiered on Showtime.
After line producing a number of creative and fiercely independent projects, Gingi began to take advantage of the huge talent pool in New York that she had met over the years and the experience she had acquired working on bigger budget projects. She also honed her productions skills throughout this period by becoming a go to producer for high profile commercials and music videos. Mos Def, Jay Z, Brandy, Missy Elliott and Usher are a few of the artists whose projects she has produced. On the film side, Gingi's knowledge and abilities attracted artists like Spike Lee's long time script supervisor, writer/director Shari Carpenter. Shari directed and Gingi produced "Kali's Vibe" which was a finalist for the 2001 Gordon Parks screenplay award and later received distribution with the "Black Movie Awards's" own Film Life after winning the audience award at the 2002 Pan African Film Festival. Gingi produced the critically acclaimed "30 Years to Life" after Television writer Vanessa Middleton approached her about teaming up for her first foray into film.
Vanessa was an Emmy nominated, co-executive producer for the Cosby Show and a credited writer for Saturday Night Live. 30 years won the Gordon Parks IFP award in 2002 and was nominated for the Grand Jury prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. It received several distribution offers, a great New York Times review and went on to be distributed theatrically and enjoy a robust life on DVD and is currently on Showtime television at least twice a month.
Recently, Gingi has honed her sharp creative eye and fierce independence by producing two projects she is very proud of. "Men without Jobs" is a slacker comedy that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2004 and garnered considerable studio attention for writer/director Mad Matthews. Gingi served as a strong consulting producer on an auteur driven project "Jellysmoke" directed by first timer Mark Banning starring Michael Ealy who recently shot to fame in Barbershop 1 and 2 as well as the Oprah Winfrey-Halle Berry project "There Eyes Were watching God". The film, "Jellysmoke" just won Best Film in the 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival and was nominated for the Spirit Awards, John Cassavetes award of 2006. Directors Mark Banning and Mad Matthewz were just named as filmmaker magazine's 2005 director's to watch for. More recently, Gingi Rochelle finished her last feature film entitled "My Brother" directed by Oscar Nominated director Anthony Lover. "My Brother" starring Vanessa L. Williams (Johnson Family Vacation and Shaft), Nashawn Kearse (Desperate Housewives) and Oscar Winner Tatum O'Neal.
Gingi is currently concentrating on closing financing on a production fund so that she can continue identifying and guiding projects that are artistically and economically viable. She works and ravels between Los Angeles and New York.
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