Robert Maier is a multimedia producer, writer, and director with a wide range of documentary, corporate and TV production experience.
Maier worked with filmmaker John Waters for fifteen years as a line producer/ production manager on Waters' films Polyester, Hairspray, Desperate Living, Female Trouble, and Cry-Baby.
Maier’s first film was the 30-minute film Love Letter to Edie (1974), a documentary on the life and career of Edith Massey, a regular actress in the John Waters films.
It has played around the world for 40 years, been excerpted for programs on Channel 4, the Discovery Channel, the Criterion Collection, and New Line Cinema's John Waters boxed set. A remastered Blu-Ray version, using the original restored 16mm film includes his "expanded director's cut".
Other than Waters, he also worked with a dozen other low-budget movie-makers in Baltimore and New York City. Maier has numerous feature film credits. For New Line Cinema in New York, he was line producer of the award-winning Alone in the Dark, and the original Hairspray. Other New York independent feature credits include The House on Sorority Row, Fastlane, The Fox Affair, and Downtown 81. He was also line producer of four feature-length world music documentaries for BMG Films by documentarian Robert Mugge.
He lived for seven years in the 1970s and 1980s in the New York City area, then returned to Baltimore for several years. In 1989, he moved to Davidson, North Carolina where he worked in Charlotte as a public TV production executive and independent producer. During that time, he traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, including a stint at Ariana Television in Afghanistan helping to launch an educational TV network in Kabul.
His broadcast credits include the one-hour documentary Trappist which appeared on PBS, ABC and NBC networks, and a six-hour series for PBS, Seapower: A Global Journey. His half-hour documentary NATIVITY airs regularly as a Christmas special on PBS and the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
In non-broadcast production, Maier was the co-writer/producer of a 15-hour teacher development series for Rutherford Learning Group, Creating the Learning Centered School, and 8 hours of productions for the Skylink Family and School Network. He has produced dozens of instructional videos, TV spots, marketing films, and two PBS how-to series, The Spirit of Cross Stitch and Homestretch.
Beginning in 2012 his interest in independent and art films led him to create several indie film series. They included The Davidson Film Club, Studio C Cinema at the Cornelius (NC) Art Center, and The Warehouse Cinema at The Warehouse Performing Art Center. They specialized in independent, documentary, foreign and classic films. He offers regular film appreciation courses in Charlotte, Western NC, and at The Palace Theater in Chattanooga, TN.
