Daniel Kremer

Frictions develop when Yisroel "Izzy" Jonigkeyt, a Chassidic Jew from Crown Heights, travels to San Francisco to visit Polish-born Catholic friend Marek Wisniewski with the intent of discovering why a Bay Area art-world iconoclast named Harry Kierk seeks to destroy a lifetime's worth of his own work. As the visit progresses, Izzy and Marek discover for the first time that complex historical baggage impinges on their curious friendship and, soon, they begin to understand why Kierk is driven towards destruction. Continued encounters with Marek's vaguely anti-Semitic cousin Irek (who is their only gateway to contact Kierk) only compound these tensions.

For those with an open mind about what cinema can be. Jerry Garanyan, an ambulance-chasing San Francisco lawyer, is a camera buff and a dogged collector of moving images. Though his legal career is a dead end which nevertheless pays his bills, he lives for the ordinary ghosts, extraordinary shadows, and fugitive moments he has preserved forever in his personal library of 8mm celluloid. As his dearest sister reckons with losing her hearing, he is targeted for an elaborate con by smooth film world scam artists who purport to represent the "real movies."

An imagined plague diary

Documentary on the life and career of famed director William Wyler. An Academy Award-winning director and 14-time Oscar nominee, Wyler was known for shooting multiple takes of a scene before he was satisfied. This documentary takes a deep dive into his extraordinary career, featuring never-before-seen material provided by Wyler's children.

Irving Rapper is, in many ways, Hollywood's forgotten man. After getting his start as a "dialogue director" at Warner Bros. in the mid 30's, he became synonymous with the studio's "women's pictures" and rose in prominence as one of Bette Davis's most consistent collaborators, including on her biggest commercial success, Now Voyager (1942). He was a rebel who led the studio in suspensions for chronically refusing to direct the scripts handed to him by the brass, waiting instead for material that better suited his interests and thematic preoccupations. He was also one in a secretive fraternity of gay directors who had to conceal their identities and shield their private lives from potential public ruination. Daniel Kremer takes you through an unexamined and misunderstood life of a man of great artistic inclination who expressed his innermost yearnings covertly through his work in motion pictures.

David Cronenberg (the well-known Canadian director's American film-student counterpart) is making an ambitious "neorealist video feature" entitled "Wireless Internet", a didactic horror film about a contagious mind virus. The project gradually morphs into something well beyond the realm of fiction.

Canadian-born filmmaker Sidney J. Furie made his name with British hits like The Young Ones (1961), The Leather Boys (1964), and The Ipcress File (1965). When he arrived in Hollywood, Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra wreaked havoc on his first major studio productions. In 1968, the newly emigrated director joined a stable of cutting-edge filmmakers at Paramount Pictures, under the new leadership of Bob Evans. His films saw both a stylistic departure and a shift in thematic focus. What was behind the evolution, and which aspects unite all of Furie's films?

Perhaps at first glance, the filmography of Silvio Narizzano appears unremarkable. Thanks to his sleeper hit Georgy Girl (1966), he's known largely as a "one-hit wonder" director. Upon closer inspection, however, likely no other filmmaker used cinema as effectively to exorcise personal demons in ways both ugly and beautiful. And few directors' sensibilities were more gay, both overtly and covertly. Film historian Daniel Kremer is your tour guide through an obscure, perplexing body of work heretofore ignored and often unfairly shunned. Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano is an essay documentary of discovery.

Peter Medak's films toy with notions of cosplay, masquerade, gamesmanship, and how power and permission structures figure into these human diversions. His filmography includes The Ruling Class (1972), The Changeling (1980), A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1971), The Krays (1990), and others, all which capitalize on these ideas. Sanity is fragile, ephemeral, and suspended from a very thin tether in all his films. This piece gets to the bottom of why Medak centers his work on such themes, and why they carry biographical weight for him personally.

Between One Eyed Jacks (1961) and The Godfather (1972), Marlon Brando appeared in twelve feature films. The actor called this period his "F*** You Years" and it was during this time that his on-set behavior hit erratic and unpredictable new heights. The qualities of the roles and the films themselves vary, but this video essay examines the historical and aesthetic profiles of this cinematic so-called "dirty dozen." Were these projects really beneath him? And what led him to this decade of perceived ignominy?

Carla Durkow is a filmmaker from Istanbul who screens her latest work, entitled Farewell Mighty Spirit, at a Philadelphia art gallery. Her film-within-a-film details the aftermath of the death of the Grand Poet of Santa Maria, and the reading of his will.

Worlds collide in this unconventional essay film, when filmmaker, film historian, and archivist Daniel Kremer seamlessly edits Michelangelo Antonioni's legendary but controversial counterculture art film Zabriskie Point (1970) into the same narrative universe as Stanley Kramer's madcap epic comedy extravaganza It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). In creating these new sequences, Kremer comes to recognize that the exercise effortlessly draws cultural and historical parallels in twentieth-century American life that echo in present-day America. The editorial mashups weave a tangled web of social and cinematic history that root our notions of Americana in the mythology of the desert. As Kremer expounds in his narration on these often astonishing and sometimes shocking associations, his very personal ties to the subject matter become manifest.

Sky-high housing costs, rents no one can pay, urban development, and street crime make life difficult for RV dwellers in Berkeley, California. City bureaucrats collaborate with real estate agents to gentrify neighborhoods forcing out already marginalized people living in cars, trucks, and RVs. With no more West to escape to, they contemplate turning back East.

Franklin J. Schaffner is the man behind a great many iconic American films: Planet of the Apes (1968), Patton (1970), Papillon (1973), The Boys from Brazil (1978), and others. Though he was an often enigmatically quiet but no less confident and decisive filmmaker, seldom was he discussed as an "auteur" director, despite his Academy Award win for Best Director and many august institutions naming coveted awards for "excellence in directing" after him. Daniel Kremer takes a deep dive into Schaffner's distinguished career, examining visual and thematic tropes that render his work extremely personal and part of a vast picture.

In 1968, filmmaker Jules Dassin collaborated with Ruby Dee and civil rights activist Julian Mayfield on Uptight, a "politically radical" film noir about Black revolution, framed against the April 4 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Director, producer and co-writer Dassin, a blacklisted American exile, returns to his birth country after having gone into a second exile from his adopted country Greece, then makes a film that roiled the powers that be (or "powers that were") in the U.S. government. The material so upset the FBI that they closely monitored the production up until the eve of its premiere, recruiting crew members as moles. The irony is rich, as Uptight was a remake of John Ford's The Informer (1935) and dealt with a turncoat character who engineers the assassination of a revolutionary leader. How is Uptight both an outlier (or anomaly) as well as simultaneously integral to the career of Jules Dassin?

Fourteen year-old Ben Fries has a cult following, a 22-year-old girlfriend, and a mortal enemy named Rick Algarosa.

Lenny Bruce's depiction on film did not start or end with Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974). Through these other often offbeat cinematic incarnations, this essay piece considers how Lenny Bruce was the perfect Bob Fosse subject, and how Fosse's focus on the lives of performers invigorated his portrait of the controversial, trail-blazing comic.

Paul Wendkos was a bit of an auteurist fetish object in the early 1960's, when his career in theatrical features reached its pinnacle. He made his mark with such genre outings as The Burglar (1957) and Face of a Fugitive (1959), as well as with the hit Gidget (1959) and his acclaimed indictment of evangelicalism Angel Baby (1961). Many of the finest critics and film writers wrote of his style admiringly, even as studio contracts regularly saddled him with empty commercial vehicles. Quentin Tarantino even credited him as the director of the faux action saga The 14 Fists of McCluskey in his Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. What is there to Paul Wendkos when we look at him and his work today?

We all know Jack Nicholson the actor. But few know the history of Jack Nicholson the screenwriter, and especially Jack Nicholson the director. Nicholson's lifelong friend, filmmaker Henry Jaglom, reflects on the icon's behind-the-camera career, while film historian/filmmaker Daniel Kremer presents and analyzes the full scope of that history.

A video essay about fifties and early sixties social and sexual mores, in life and in cinema, and how these "codes" (in partnership with a production Code, capital C, which was almost antediluvian in terms of sexual politics) molded and then trapped the female performers who came up in the shadow of it all. Suzanne Pleshette is a perfect case in point.

John G. Avildsen has only recently cemented his reputation as the "king of the underdogs," owing to his having directed both Rocky (1976) and The Karate Kid (1984). Within the last decade, a feature-length biographical documentary was released and a critical study book was published. But before Rocky, he was an astute chronicler of the counterculture, whose films possessed a rugged street aesthetic. Those early films (including Joe, Guess What We Learned in School Today, Cry Uncle, Save the Tiger, and The Stoolie) are evaluated for assuming an alternate posture on the counterculture happenings of the era.

Filmmaker Louis Malle worked adjacent to the French Nouvelle Vague, but was admittedly never fully part of it, cementing his reputation instead with films like Elevator to the Gallows (1958), Zazie dans le Metro (1960), and Murmur of the Heart (1971), among others. In 1978, he made his first English-language picture, the highly controversial Pretty Baby, produced by Paramount Pictures. For the next decade and a half, he continued working in the English language, mostly in the United States, with films as varied as Atlantic City (1980), My Dinner With Andre (1981), Crackers (1983), Alamo Bay (1985), Damage (1992), and Vanya on 42nd Street (1992). What distinguishes these seven Anglophone films from Malle's previous Francophone films? And when Louis Malle arrived to make pictures in America, what did he see? What did America mean to Louis Malle?

Four interlocking stories with a Jazz theme. Four Women go out to visit the sites of the jazz clubs where Lou, 65 and dying of cancer, claims she once performed as a young singer. It's election night, Nov. 8, 2016 and the women follow the results on their cell phones. It's also opening night for the C Flat jazz club where they end the evening up as their worst fears are realized: Trump has won the election.

What do the movies First Blood and Weekend at Bernie's have in common? One man with a clear and curious thematic focus, that's what. Ted Kotcheff is an auteur filmmaker. He is a director with a unifying style, a clear thematic concern, and a coherent vision of life. This video essay defines these elements with an in-depth analysis of his filmography, which also includes Wake in Fright (1971), The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974), Fun with Dick and Jane (1976), North Dallas Forty (1979), and many others.

Frictions develop when Yisroel "Izzy" Jonigkeyt, a Chassidic Jew from Crown Heights, travels to San Francisco to visit Polish-born Catholic friend Marek Wisniewski with the intent of discovering why a Bay Area art-world iconoclast named Harry Kierk seeks to destroy a lifetime's worth of his own work. As the visit progresses, Izzy and Marek discover for the first time that complex historical baggage impinges on their curious friendship and, soon, they begin to understand why Kierk is driven towards destruction. Continued encounters with Marek's vaguely anti-Semitic cousin Irek (who is their only gateway to contact Kierk) only compound these tensions.

Frictions develop when Yisroel "Izzy" Jonigkeyt, a Chassidic Jew from Crown Heights, travels to San Francisco to visit Polish-born Catholic friend Marek Wisniewski with the intent of discovering why a Bay Area art-world iconoclast named Harry Kierk seeks to destroy a lifetime's worth of his own work. As the visit progresses, Izzy and Marek discover for the first time that complex historical baggage impinges on their curious friendship and, soon, they begin to understand why Kierk is driven towards destruction. Continued encounters with Marek's vaguely anti-Semitic cousin Irek (who is their only gateway to contact Kierk) only compound these tensions.

For those with an open mind about what cinema can be. Jerry Garanyan, an ambulance-chasing San Francisco lawyer, is a camera buff and a dogged collector of moving images. Though his legal career is a dead end which nevertheless pays his bills, he lives for the ordinary ghosts, extraordinary shadows, and fugitive moments he has preserved forever in his personal library of 8mm celluloid. As his dearest sister reckons with losing her hearing, he is targeted for an elaborate con by smooth film world scam artists who purport to represent the "real movies."

For those with an open mind about what cinema can be. Jerry Garanyan, an ambulance-chasing San Francisco lawyer, is a camera buff and a dogged collector of moving images. Though his legal career is a dead end which nevertheless pays his bills, he lives for the ordinary ghosts, extraordinary shadows, and fugitive moments he has preserved forever in his personal library of 8mm celluloid. As his dearest sister reckons with losing her hearing, he is targeted for an elaborate con by smooth film world scam artists who purport to represent the "real movies."

Traumatized by his recent divorce, lovelorn Stanley takes off cross country to San Francisco, landing at his enterprising sister Nancy's doorstep. Nancy, who makes counterculture cinema-themed t-shirts, lives in "Camille's Castle," a frozen-in-time legacy home for displaced artists and outcasts. Together, they search for the remaining scraps of San Francisco's Summer of Love, and wind up at odds with each other. Countercurrents is an aggressive tribute to the counterculture films of the late 60's, with "easter eggs" in no short supply.

Traumatized by his recent divorce, lovelorn Stanley takes off cross country to San Francisco, landing at his enterprising sister Nancy's doorstep. Nancy, who makes counterculture cinema-themed t-shirts, lives in "Camille's Castle," a frozen-in-time legacy home for displaced artists and outcasts. Together, they search for the remaining scraps of San Francisco's Summer of Love, and wind up at odds with each other. Countercurrents is an aggressive tribute to the counterculture films of the late 60's, with "easter eggs" in no short supply.

Eddie Huntly, an east coast radio personality, moves to San Francisco to marry Thea, the sister of his best friend Neil, a successful entrepreneur. Shortly before Eddie's arrival, Neil is found murdered in what the police surmise was a simple mugging gone awry. As the sullen Eddie steps in as interim host of his old friend Dean's late-night talk-radio show, he obsessively makes regular visits to the forested spot where Neil's corpse was found. One such visit unleashes a chain of unpredictable events that sends Eddie snooping into the life of a sleepwalking drifter with a mysterious past.

Eddie Huntly, an east coast radio personality, moves to San Francisco to marry Thea, the sister of his best friend Neil, a successful entrepreneur. Shortly before Eddie's arrival, Neil is found murdered in what the police surmise was a simple mugging gone awry. As the sullen Eddie steps in as interim host of his old friend Dean's late-night talk-radio show, he obsessively makes regular visits to the forested spot where Neil's corpse was found. One such visit unleashes a chain of unpredictable events that sends Eddie snooping into the life of a sleepwalking drifter with a mysterious past.

Eddie Huntly, an east coast radio personality, moves to San Francisco to marry Thea, the sister of his best friend Neil, a successful entrepreneur. Shortly before Eddie's arrival, Neil is found murdered in what the police surmise was a simple mugging gone awry. As the sullen Eddie steps in as interim host of his old friend Dean's late-night talk-radio show, he obsessively makes regular visits to the forested spot where Neil's corpse was found. One such visit unleashes a chain of unpredictable events that sends Eddie snooping into the life of a sleepwalking drifter with a mysterious past.

Irving Rapper is, in many ways, Hollywood's forgotten man. After getting his start as a "dialogue director" at Warner Bros. in the mid 30's, he became synonymous with the studio's "women's pictures" and rose in prominence as one of Bette Davis's most consistent collaborators, including on her biggest commercial success, Now Voyager (1942). He was a rebel who led the studio in suspensions for chronically refusing to direct the scripts handed to him by the brass, waiting instead for material that better suited his interests and thematic preoccupations. He was also one in a secretive fraternity of gay directors who had to conceal their identities and shield their private lives from potential public ruination. Daniel Kremer takes you through an unexamined and misunderstood life of a man of great artistic inclination who expressed his innermost yearnings covertly through his work in motion pictures.

Irving Rapper is, in many ways, Hollywood's forgotten man. After getting his start as a "dialogue director" at Warner Bros. in the mid 30's, he became synonymous with the studio's "women's pictures" and rose in prominence as one of Bette Davis's most consistent collaborators, including on her biggest commercial success, Now Voyager (1942). He was a rebel who led the studio in suspensions for chronically refusing to direct the scripts handed to him by the brass, waiting instead for material that better suited his interests and thematic preoccupations. He was also one in a secretive fraternity of gay directors who had to conceal their identities and shield their private lives from potential public ruination. Daniel Kremer takes you through an unexamined and misunderstood life of a man of great artistic inclination who expressed his innermost yearnings covertly through his work in motion pictures.

Canadian-born filmmaker Sidney J. Furie made his name with British hits like The Young Ones (1961), The Leather Boys (1964), and The Ipcress File (1965). When he arrived in Hollywood, Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra wreaked havoc on his first major studio productions. In 1968, the newly emigrated director joined a stable of cutting-edge filmmakers at Paramount Pictures, under the new leadership of Bob Evans. His films saw both a stylistic departure and a shift in thematic focus. What was behind the evolution, and which aspects unite all of Furie's films?

Canadian-born filmmaker Sidney J. Furie made his name with British hits like The Young Ones (1961), The Leather Boys (1964), and The Ipcress File (1965). When he arrived in Hollywood, Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra wreaked havoc on his first major studio productions. In 1968, the newly emigrated director joined a stable of cutting-edge filmmakers at Paramount Pictures, under the new leadership of Bob Evans. His films saw both a stylistic departure and a shift in thematic focus. What was behind the evolution, and which aspects unite all of Furie's films?

Mixing elements of narrative, experimental, pseudo-documentary and essayist cinema, Sophisticated Acquaintance tells the story of a tormented individual whose short life and long death were affected by a great many factors. Klaus Mann (John Gross), a present-day Philadelphia avatar of the real-life European author of Mephisto, lives in the shadow of his father, the eminent intellectual, novelist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann (Ernst Hohmann). When Klaus pens a controversial essay on "revolutionary suicide" and then acts on it, in protest of the world's selfishness, a group of his contemporaries speak up in filmed interviews about what led him down that path. It is a film about the creative process, the tragic depiction of a strained father-son relationship and, most of all, it is a film about individuality.

Mixing elements of narrative, experimental, pseudo-documentary and essayist cinema, Sophisticated Acquaintance tells the story of a tormented individual whose short life and long death were affected by a great many factors. Klaus Mann (John Gross), a present-day Philadelphia avatar of the real-life European author of Mephisto, lives in the shadow of his father, the eminent intellectual, novelist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann (Ernst Hohmann). When Klaus pens a controversial essay on "revolutionary suicide" and then acts on it, in protest of the world's selfishness, a group of his contemporaries speak up in filmed interviews about what led him down that path. It is a film about the creative process, the tragic depiction of a strained father-son relationship and, most of all, it is a film about individuality.

Perhaps at first glance, the filmography of Silvio Narizzano appears unremarkable. Thanks to his sleeper hit Georgy Girl (1966), he's known largely as a "one-hit wonder" director. Upon closer inspection, however, likely no other filmmaker used cinema as effectively to exorcise personal demons in ways both ugly and beautiful. And few directors' sensibilities were more gay, both overtly and covertly. Film historian Daniel Kremer is your tour guide through an obscure, perplexing body of work heretofore ignored and often unfairly shunned. Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano is an essay documentary of discovery.

Perhaps at first glance, the filmography of Silvio Narizzano appears unremarkable. Thanks to his sleeper hit Georgy Girl (1966), he's known largely as a "one-hit wonder" director. Upon closer inspection, however, likely no other filmmaker used cinema as effectively to exorcise personal demons in ways both ugly and beautiful. And few directors' sensibilities were more gay, both overtly and covertly. Film historian Daniel Kremer is your tour guide through an obscure, perplexing body of work heretofore ignored and often unfairly shunned. Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano is an essay documentary of discovery.

Peter Medak's films toy with notions of cosplay, masquerade, gamesmanship, and how power and permission structures figure into these human diversions. His filmography includes The Ruling Class (1972), The Changeling (1980), A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1971), The Krays (1990), and others, all which capitalize on these ideas. Sanity is fragile, ephemeral, and suspended from a very thin tether in all his films. This piece gets to the bottom of why Medak centers his work on such themes, and why they carry biographical weight for him personally.

Peter Medak's films toy with notions of cosplay, masquerade, gamesmanship, and how power and permission structures figure into these human diversions. His filmography includes The Ruling Class (1972), The Changeling (1980), A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1971), The Krays (1990), and others, all which capitalize on these ideas. Sanity is fragile, ephemeral, and suspended from a very thin tether in all his films. This piece gets to the bottom of why Medak centers his work on such themes, and why they carry biographical weight for him personally.

Between One Eyed Jacks (1961) and The Godfather (1972), Marlon Brando appeared in twelve feature films. The actor called this period his "F*** You Years" and it was during this time that his on-set behavior hit erratic and unpredictable new heights. The qualities of the roles and the films themselves vary, but this video essay examines the historical and aesthetic profiles of this cinematic so-called "dirty dozen." Were these projects really beneath him? And what led him to this decade of perceived ignominy?

Between One Eyed Jacks (1961) and The Godfather (1972), Marlon Brando appeared in twelve feature films. The actor called this period his "F*** You Years" and it was during this time that his on-set behavior hit erratic and unpredictable new heights. The qualities of the roles and the films themselves vary, but this video essay examines the historical and aesthetic profiles of this cinematic so-called "dirty dozen." Were these projects really beneath him? And what led him to this decade of perceived ignominy?

A young woman named Emily has just arrived in New York from Pittsburgh and has recently changed her name to Chazz. Jobless, she responds to an ad involving parrot-sitting for a Manhattanite going out of town, and must weather the emotional repercussions of the humiliating thing she decides to do while cooped up house-sitting, which precipitates in her eavesdropping on the neighbors, all the while having unreciprocated conversations with the parrot.

Worlds collide in this unconventional essay film, when filmmaker, film historian, and archivist Daniel Kremer seamlessly edits Michelangelo Antonioni's legendary but controversial counterculture art film Zabriskie Point (1970) into the same narrative universe as Stanley Kramer's madcap epic comedy extravaganza It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). In creating these new sequences, Kremer comes to recognize that the exercise effortlessly draws cultural and historical parallels in twentieth-century American life that echo in present-day America. The editorial mashups weave a tangled web of social and cinematic history that root our notions of Americana in the mythology of the desert. As Kremer expounds in his narration on these often astonishing and sometimes shocking associations, his very personal ties to the subject matter become manifest.

Worlds collide in this unconventional essay film, when filmmaker, film historian, and archivist Daniel Kremer seamlessly edits Michelangelo Antonioni's legendary but controversial counterculture art film Zabriskie Point (1970) into the same narrative universe as Stanley Kramer's madcap epic comedy extravaganza It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). In creating these new sequences, Kremer comes to recognize that the exercise effortlessly draws cultural and historical parallels in twentieth-century American life that echo in present-day America. The editorial mashups weave a tangled web of social and cinematic history that root our notions of Americana in the mythology of the desert. As Kremer expounds in his narration on these often astonishing and sometimes shocking associations, his very personal ties to the subject matter become manifest.