Ruby Oliver

Ruby Christine Oliver was born on the thirteenth of August 1934 at Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a Seattle Black family of the principal post-1942 Boeing Plant Black-Pacific-Northwest community. She was raised in the principal Seattle Black Central District community of the principal post-Second-World-War period.

She completed her secondary education at the Garfield High School at Seattle in 1952 — and attended Seattle University from 1952 to 1956 in the principal English-and-education programme.

She worked across the principal post-1956 period as a Seattle public-school teacher and the principal Seattle Group Health Cooperative outreach director — at the principal Seattle post-1965 Black-American community-organising and health-outreach programmes.

She founded the Mountain Top Productions company at Seattle in 1985 — the principal first Black-American film-production company in the principal post-1985 Pacific-Northwest Black-cinema commercial period.

She self-financed the principal first Mountain Top Productions feature film Love Your Mama of 1989 — a one-hundred-and-eight-minute drama of an African American Chicago South Side mother of three children struggling to raise the principal family across the principal post-1980 Chicago drug-and-violence-and-school-system community-and-economic-collapse period.

Love Your Mama was directed by Oliver at Chicago and at Seattle across the principal post-1985 Mountain Top Productions self-financed commercial-production period — at a budget of approximately three hundred thousand dollars raised by Oliver from the principal Seattle Black-Pacific-Northwest community-and-private-investor commercial-financing programme.

Love Your Mama was the first feature film directed by a Black American woman west of the Mississippi River — and was the principal first Black-American-female commercial-feature film commercially released in the principal post-1989 American post-Spike-Lee American commercial-Black-cinema period at the principal Hemdale Releasing Corporation domestic distribution programme.

Love Your Mama opened at approximately two hundred American commercial cinemas in March 1989 — and grossed approximately five million dollars at the principal post-1989 domestic theatrical release period.

She directed five further documentaries across the principal post-1989 Mountain Top Productions period — including the principal documentary studies on the principal Seattle Black-American community-and-social-services programmes of the principal post-1989 Seattle Black-Pacific-Northwest commercial-and-philanthropic community.

She was the principal Black-American-female commercial-feature-film director of the principal post-1989 Pacific-Northwest American cinema period — and the principal Black-American-female community-and-philanthropic-cinema-and-documentary auteur of the principal post-1989 Seattle Black-Pacific-Northwest period.

She died at Seattle on the thirteenth of October 2008 of complications of cancer, at seventy-four.

She is honored here as the director of Love Your Mama.