Gill Holland

John Gill Holland Jr. (born November 7, 1964) is an American entrepreneur and film producer. He is the co-developer of The Green Building in Louisville, Kentucky. In 2016 and 2017, Holland was voted Best Entrepreneur in Louisville's LeoWeekly Readers’ Choice Awards. In 2017, Louisville Business First honored him with the Excellence in Leadership Award for his successful NuLu redevelopment and current efforts in the Portland neighborhood.

Holland was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and raised in Davidson, North Carolina. His father was born in Lynch, Kentucky and grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia. Holland’s mother was born in Norway. He was an Eagle Scout and graduated from Episcopal High School in 1983. Holland went on to be a Morehead Scholar and graduated from the University of North Carolina (B.A., 1987) (J.D., 1991). He spent his junior year at Paul Valéry University of Montpellier and one semester of law school with Pace University at University College London.

Holland owns The Group Entertainment, which includes a film production company, talent management division, a music company and an art gallery, The Green Building Gallery. In the past, The Group Entertainment also included a talent management company. Holland has produced more than 100 feature films including Hurricane Streets which was the first film ever to win three Sundance Film Festival awards in 1997 as well as the Cannes Film Festival selection Inside/Out, the Independent Spirit Awards winner Sweet Land and nominee Dear Jesse (also nominated for an Emmy), the Gotham Awards nominee Spring Forward, FLOW: For Love of Water, which was short-listed for an Academy Award, and 2017 SXSW winner Most Beautiful Island. Holland was an important part of the promotion strategy for Desert Blue (1998), a movie he produced. Samuel Goldwyn, the film's distributor, placed an ad in New York City newspapers that read simply: "If you know Gill Holland, see this movie."

He has served on many film festival panels and juries, including 1999 Sundance Film Festival short film jury, Norwegian International Film Festival for the Amanda Awards and the Academy Awards, Student Division (2002 and 2003).

Earlier in his career, Holland founded cineBLAST!, which The Hollywood Reporter in 1999 and 2000 named one of the top ten production companies in New York City before he sold the company in 2000 at the height of the tech boom. Prior to that, that he worked for three years at Unifrance after a brief stint at October Films.

Holland is the founder of sonaBLAST! Records, an independent record label established in New York City in 2002, which moved with him to Louisville in 2006. The label features Ben Sollee, Nerves Junior, Kyle James Hauser, Cheyenne Marie Mize,[10] The Old Ceremony,[11] and Irish singer-songwriter Mark Geary, whose 2004 release Ghosts featuring backing vocals by Josh Ritter and Glen Hansard approached gold status and received critical acclaim in Ireland and the United States. Holland also worked with Jack Harlow on his debut EP, whose single "What's Poppin" reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Together with his wife, Augusta Brown Holland, Holland developed The Green Building.[12][13] This renovation of a historic building opened in the Fall of 2008 in the area that he dubbed "NuLu"[13][14][15] for the East Market District. It used to provide offices for sonaBLAST! Records, Holland Brown Books and The Group Entertainment. They then went on to landmark and develop almost a block of neighboring historic buildings. He is the author of two fund-raising art books for children, "Louisville Counts" and "L is for Louisville."[10][16] Louisville Magazine named Gill its 2009 Person of the Year.[17]

He has been dubbed the "Mayor of NuLu", by Louisville magazine NFocus, after all of his efforts in the East Market District, where he has also been president of NuLu Business Association for the past 4 years. In 2013, he turned his attention to the historic Portland neighborhood in West Louisville and is and working on rehabilitating historic shotgun houses, in addition to developing several mixed-use spaces.

Holland is a minority owner of the Forecastle Festival, Louisville City FC,[18] and the famed music recording studio La La Land.

Past and present board and commission service includes Actors Theatre of Louisville, Louisville Film Society, Fund for the Arts, Speed Art Museum, Olmsted Parks Conservancy, Louisville Public Media, Kentucky Film Commission, Governor's School for the Arts, International Bluegrass Music Museum, the Americana Community Center, and the Muhammad Ali Center.

Holland ran unsuccessfully for Louisville Metro Council in 2016. He also ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky with running mate Adam Edelen in the Kentucky gubernatorial election in 2019.