BIO

2024 began with completing a Hallmark Rom-Com filmed on location in Niagara Falls. Other recent TV movies include quite a variety; a third movie filmed at Quebec's Hôtel de Glace. – 'Winter Castle Romance', and a comedy for Lifetime - 'Laughing all the Way', and for Hallmark - 'Fly Away with Me', in which she not only directed, but acted as Stunt Double for a biplane aerial sequence, and a Western shoot on a ranch in British Columbia 'Love in Yellowstone', and 'Feeling Butterflies'.

Marita's recent work includes three seasons on 911 & 911 Lonestar, for Ryan Murphy, while acting as an enthusiastic mentor for RM's Half Initiative Program (a training program for new directors).

During the pandemic, she was the first director to go back to camera in North America.  Her 2021 'Fit For a Prince', obtained the highest rating for a TV movie in the history of the Hallmark Channel.

A versatile veteran television director with over twenty years' experience, she is an adventure seeker, traveling  the world with cameras and drone.  During the down time of the Industry strike of 2023, she explored French Polynesia, including the very remote Marquesas Islands, on the trail of Gauguin, Herman Melville, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Other explorations include remote islands in the deep  South Pacific, Papua New Guinea, and all the vast Solomon Islands,  where she scuba dived to film WWII Wrecks.

Acclaimed actors she has worked with include; Angela Bassett, Cuba Gooding Jr, Emma Stone, Chris Pratt,  George Clooney, Lady Gaga,  Kathy Bates, Kyle MacLachlan, Sarah Paulson, Peter Coyote, Gene Hackman,  Danny Glover, and Sally Fields.

She made short films from visits to Africa; Maasai in Tanzania, Himbas of Namibia, Bushmen of Botswana.  She has photographed Victoria Falls from every angle – including rafting down the Zambezi from the base of the falls, and immersed in water at the brink of the falls, and she leaned over the edge with her camera to get an angle of the cascade from the  top.

Her poetically written, The Silk Road in Central Asia, was filmed in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.  POLAND: Three Generations, documented her daughters and 90 year old mother, visiting the villages of ancestors.  On the anniversary of D-Day, she traveled to Normandy to meet WWII veterans.  These rich experiences resonate  profoundly in her work.

Raised in a small mill town near Pittsburgh, PA, she studied theater at Carnegie Mellon University, lived in NYC to work in theater, and moved to LA to obtain a degree in Motion Picture/Television (minor in Art History) from UCLA.

Her influences come from - all history (including cinema), meeting remote indigenous, people, literature, and art.