Profiles: Maja Zimmermann | Proimágenes Colombia

Swiss-born Maja Zimmermann got her production training in Hollywood while based in Los Angeles where she worked on productions such as To Protect & Serve, Promised Land and Looking for Else. Zimmerman met Diego F. Ramirez, founding member and general producer at Colombia’s 64-A Films when Carlos Moreno’s Perro come perro participated in the 2008 Sundance Festival. At the time Maja was a sales agent purchasing high-quality international projects for Altadena Films in London and L.A. and was very impressed with the Colombian filmmaker’s team. Following several encounters with Diego Ramirez and a few trips to Colombia, in November 2011 she became the new executive producer of international projects for 64-A Films.
 
Maja holds a degree in Professional Laboratory Photography (1984) and Product and Fashion Photography (1988) from the Zurich School of Arts; she studied Direction and Production, was awarded a Mary Pickford residency (1996-1999) and earned a Bachelor’s Degree (with honors) in Art in Film (1999) from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. In 1999, she worked as development assistant for Miramax under Eli Holzman, CEO of Miramax TV and later for Strictly Films, with Doug Claybourne, producer of films such as The Mask of Zorro, Fast and Furious and the Oscar nominee North Country.
 
Maja and Diego met several times at different international markets, festivals and co-production events in 2008 and 2009 and in her words “we realized we shared very similar tastes and film work ethics.” Her first direct contact with Colombian culture came in 2009 when Diego invited her to the country to meet with his partners in Cali and Bogotá, as well as other Colombian film industry professionals who have since then become partners in the company.
 
Maja produced Stefan Lysenko’s Between Christmas & New Year’s (2000) and Joseph Perez’s To Protect & Serve (2001); was associate producer and production manager of Michael Beltrami’s Promised Land (2004), in the official competition at the 2004 Locarno Film Festival; was US co-producer for the documentary Looking for Else (2007) by Sandy Kopitopoulos and Daniel Maurer, for which she received Best Producer at the 2007 LA Femme Film Fest; was executive producer for Alejandro Landes’s Porfirio, selected for the Director’s Fortnight at the 2011 Cannes Festival; and co-produced Jardín de Amapolas by Juan Carlos Melo and La 4ª Compania by Vanessa Arreola. The latter three films will premiere in 2012. She is soon to produce the Colombian-German co-production Arijuna - Hombres Blancos written by Jorg Hiller.