Eric Mitchell

Directing

Eric Mitchell

France

Eric Mitchell is a French born writer, director and actor who moved to New York City in the early 1970s. He has acted in films such Permanent Vacation by Jim Jarmusch, but he is best known for his writing and directing his own films.

Acting credits

No artwork available
9.0

This thriller looks at the defection of a terrorist and focuses on frequent violence and repetitive sex scenes with full frontal nudity. Henri (Hubert Lucot) belongs to a terrorist gang that orders him to kill the sister of one of their members. The member himself died when he single-handedly carried out an attack on a carload of American military advisors in Paris. Henri balks at this assignment, since the gang only wants the sister assassinated because they believe that she would name them to the authorities. Instead of following through, Henri runs away, and the others soon follow in hot pursuit.

Last Cry

1988

Red Italy poster
4.0

Second feature film by the French-born director is a Bertolucci-style story of a bored, rich woman looking for romance and adventure. She meets an American G.I., dumps him, then falls for a Communist worker.

Red Italy

1979

Permanent Vacation poster
5.9

In downtown Manhattan, twentysomething Allie, whose father is not around and whose mother is institutionalized, is a big Charlie Parker fan. He almost subconsciously searches for meaning in his life and meets some idiosyncratic characters along the way.

Permanent Vacation

1981

Blank City poster
6.9

In the years before Ronald Reagan took office, Manhattan was in ruins. But true art has never come from comfort, and it was precisely those dire circumstances that inspired artists like Jim Jarmusch, Lizzy Borden, and Amos Poe to produce some of their best works. Taking their cues from punk rock and new wave music, these young maverick filmmakers confronted viewers with a stark reality that stood in powerful contrast to the escapist product being churned out by Hollywood.

Blank City

2011

Candy Mountain poster
6.1

A mediocre musician goes on the road in search of the world's greatest guitar maker.

Candy Mountain

1988

Adios poster
NR

"Shortly after Amos went into home hospice he began filming ‘Adios’, a short film, compiled of 16mm and Super 8 footage, to premiere at his memorial, chronicling all the family and friends who have come to visit. Even Courtney our absolutely wonderful hospice nurse is in it. […] Only twice have we forgotten to film a visitor. Amos designated me the Director of Photography. Since I have to focus and shoot using my bad left eye the joke in our home is that it’s a film by a dying director and a blind DP." – Claudia Summers

Adios

2025

Dreamland poster
9.0

Small-town gangsters and ambitious young girls meet in "Dreamland", where they exchange nervous kisses and green banknotes.

Dreamland

1997

No artwork available
NR

Snake Woman, created by Downtown artist and beloved Queen of the Mudd Club Tina L’Hotsky, stars Astor as a waylaid heroine fending for herself in the wild. Filmed guerilla style in Central Park, the film’s exotic élan and theatrical performances express an homage to 1940s-era jungle movies and the underground cinema of Jack Smith.

Snake Woman

I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed poster
5.8

January 1966. In a Paris apartment, police discovers the corpse of Georges Figon, the man who broke the scandal of the Ben Barka affair and undermined Gaullist power.

I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed

2005

I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed poster
5.8

January 1966. In a Paris apartment, police discovers the corpse of Georges Figon, the man who broke the scandal of the Ben Barka affair and undermined Gaullist power.

I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed

2005

Doomed and Famous poster
NR

New York’s Miguel Abreu Gallery is at the center of Bingham Bryant’s short, which follows Adrian Dannatt across his eponymous exhibit while observing works from, among others, Pablo Picasso, Guy Debord, Nan Goldin, Damien Hirst, and Duncan Hannah. Each is captured by cinematographer Sean Price Williams in appropriately textured images while a studious, amusing voice-over jumps between biography and philosophy.

Doomed and Famous

2025

For Sale poster
5.2

A Private detective is hired to trace a woman who ran away and disappeared on her wedding day. The movie follows him and recounts the story of her life through her eyes and the eyes of those interviewed by the detective.

For Sale

1998

The Super-8 Show: Beyond Home Movies poster
NR

A short survey of the small-gauge narrative film, beginning with the Kuchars' Sylvia's Promise (1962). Primarily focused on East Coast artists, the work of Eric Mitchell, Manuel DeLanda and Ericka Beckman is highlighted.

The Super-8 Show: Beyond Home Movies

1981

The Way It Is poster
8.0

A group of actors in the East Village of New York City have been rehearsing for a play when the lead actress in the play turns up dead.

The Way It Is

1986

Unmade Beds poster
4.5

Sketched loosely, the narrative of Poe's first feature is as scrappy and paper-thin as its protagonist Rico, a self-styled loner in New York City circa 1976 who longs to inhabit the "New Wave" scene of mid-60s Paris. In Rico's day-to-day life as an unsuccessful photographer, he wearily searches for authentic connection-- even as he spouts the most inauthentic prose imaginable.

Unmade Beds

1976

The Foreigner poster
6.0

A French special op suffers an existential crisis as he wanders New York City in search of a mission and the requisite connections.

The Foreigner

1978

Force of Circumstance poster
9.0

A courier who represents Moroccan dissidents arrives in Washington with secret documents.

Force of Circumstance

1990

No artwork available
5.0

Based on the true story of four Nazi saboteurs who infiltrated the US in 1942 and were quickly caught and executed, this 80-minute ode to America's irresistibly corruptive allure was the only underground feature by writer-director Anders Grafstrom. A Swedish art director who relocated to NYC, he created this grandiose No-Wave, Super-8 color-epic at the age of 23, only to die in a Mexican car accident a few months after completing the film.

The Long Island Four

1980

End of the Night poster
8.0

A domestic accident causes a quiet and simple man to undergo drastic personality changes which will takes him to New York’s underground nightclubs.

End of the Night

1990

Sleepless Nights poster
NR

New Cinema cofounder Becky Johnston recently described this little-seen feature as “an East Village reinvention of the Otto Preminger movie *Laura*” that plays “fast and loose with the noir detective genre.”

Sleepless Nights

1979

The Scenic Route poster
5.8

An experimental drama that spins the tale of a woman, her sister, and the man who completes the triangle. Told through such fertile sources as grand opera, classical painting, and Victorian melodrama.

The Scenic Route

1978

Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole poster
4.2

The Levys, a glamorous couple, used to make their living robbing golfers, until they met their fatal handicap. Years later, scriptwriter Remy Gravelle decides to observe the Levy progeny as they sail endlessly round Manhattan in their luxury yacht.

Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole

1992

Dear Jimmy poster
NR

How to play a melody? A magic moment, unrepeatable. Life is just a bowl of cherries. Film as art as life as film.

Dear Jimmy

1978

Minus Zero poster
NR

A psycho noir where stalkers, terrorists and government agents collide.

Minus Zero

1979

Behind the camera

No artwork available
NR

Experimental short.

Mass Homicide

1977

No artwork available
NR

Experimental short.

Mass Homicide

1977

Red Italy poster
4.0

Second feature film by the French-born director is a Bertolucci-style story of a bored, rich woman looking for romance and adventure. She meets an American G.I., dumps him, then falls for a Communist worker.

Red Italy

1979

Red Italy poster
4.0

Second feature film by the French-born director is a Bertolucci-style story of a bored, rich woman looking for romance and adventure. She meets an American G.I., dumps him, then falls for a Communist worker.

Red Italy

1979

Red Italy poster
4.0

Second feature film by the French-born director is a Bertolucci-style story of a bored, rich woman looking for romance and adventure. She meets an American G.I., dumps him, then falls for a Communist worker.

Red Italy

1979

The Way It Is poster
8.0

A group of actors in the East Village of New York City have been rehearsing for a play when the lead actress in the play turns up dead.

The Way It Is

1986

The Way It Is poster
8.0

A group of actors in the East Village of New York City have been rehearsing for a play when the lead actress in the play turns up dead.

The Way It Is

1986

Underground U.S.A. poster
4.8

The Sunset Blvd. of underground cinema, and a suitably ambivalent retrospect on the star-game casualties of New York's upper depths, with Patti Astor statuesquely hysterical as a 20-year-old Norma Desmond, made up to recall Edie Sedgwick and surrounded by Warhol's lost children. We've been here before, but without the hindsight: a camera cruise along a hustler's meat-rack, kitchen-talk over cold canned spaghetti, Taylor Mead grimacing in a spastic dance, the silent stud a sullenly passive observer. Mitchell's ear for campy native wit and eye for figures in a loft-scape happily keep at bay the otherwise contagious NY ennui.

Underground U.S.A.

1980

Underground U.S.A. poster
4.8

The Sunset Blvd. of underground cinema, and a suitably ambivalent retrospect on the star-game casualties of New York's upper depths, with Patti Astor statuesquely hysterical as a 20-year-old Norma Desmond, made up to recall Edie Sedgwick and surrounded by Warhol's lost children. We've been here before, but without the hindsight: a camera cruise along a hustler's meat-rack, kitchen-talk over cold canned spaghetti, Taylor Mead grimacing in a spastic dance, the silent stud a sullenly passive observer. Mitchell's ear for campy native wit and eye for figures in a loft-scape happily keep at bay the otherwise contagious NY ennui.

Underground U.S.A.

1980

Underground U.S.A. poster
4.8

The Sunset Blvd. of underground cinema, and a suitably ambivalent retrospect on the star-game casualties of New York's upper depths, with Patti Astor statuesquely hysterical as a 20-year-old Norma Desmond, made up to recall Edie Sedgwick and surrounded by Warhol's lost children. We've been here before, but without the hindsight: a camera cruise along a hustler's meat-rack, kitchen-talk over cold canned spaghetti, Taylor Mead grimacing in a spastic dance, the silent stud a sullenly passive observer. Mitchell's ear for campy native wit and eye for figures in a loft-scape happily keep at bay the otherwise contagious NY ennui.

Underground U.S.A.

1980

Kidnapped poster
4.5

Eric Mitchell's debut film, shot in Super 8, stars Mitchell, Anya Phillips, Patti Astor, and Duncan Smith among a crowd of hip "poseurs," talking sex, manners, and politics.

Kidnapped

1978

Kidnapped poster
4.5

Eric Mitchell's debut film, shot in Super 8, stars Mitchell, Anya Phillips, Patti Astor, and Duncan Smith among a crowd of hip "poseurs," talking sex, manners, and politics.

Kidnapped

1978

A Matter of Facts poster
NR

Starting with a scene from Squat Theatre's "Mr Dead and Mrs Free" shot in their storefront theatre on West 23rd Street, Chelsea, New York, "A Matter of Facts" draws a parallel narrative which follows the characters from the theatre into real life.

A Matter of Facts

1982

A Matter of Facts poster
NR

Starting with a scene from Squat Theatre's "Mr Dead and Mrs Free" shot in their storefront theatre on West 23rd Street, Chelsea, New York, "A Matter of Facts" draws a parallel narrative which follows the characters from the theatre into real life.

A Matter of Facts

1982

A Matter of Facts poster
NR

Starting with a scene from Squat Theatre's "Mr Dead and Mrs Free" shot in their storefront theatre on West 23rd Street, Chelsea, New York, "A Matter of Facts" draws a parallel narrative which follows the characters from the theatre into real life.

A Matter of Facts

1982

No artwork available
NR

1978. USA. A performance film composed by Eric Mitchell, Maripol. Cinematography by James Nares. Staging by Mitchell. Styling by Maripol. With Edwige Belmore, Maripol, Mitchell, Olivier Mosset, JP Roland Levy. Video. 30 min.

Bikers or Vanity in Leather

1978