Christa Päffgen, known by her stage name Nico, was a German singer, songwriter, musician, model, and actress. She had roles in several films, including Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966).
Emir Kusturica is a Serbian filmmaker, actor and musician. He has been recognized for several internationally acclaimed feature films, as well as his projects in town-building. He has competed at the Cannes Film Festival on five occasions and won the Palme d'Or twice, as well as the Best Director prize for Time of the Gypsies.
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre, or financing.
Paul Joseph Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. Schrader wrote or co-wrote screenplays for four Martin Scorsese films: Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Bringing Out the Dead (1999). Schrader has also directed 18 feature films, including his directing debut crime drama, Blue Collar, the crime drama Hardcore, his 1982 remake of the horror classic Cat People, the crime drama American Gigolo (1980), the biographical drama Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), the true life biopic Patty Hearst (1988), the cult film Light Sleeper (1992), the drama Affliction (1997), the biographical film Auto Focus (2002), the erotic dramatic thriller The Canyons (2013), and the dramatic thriller First Reformed (2017), the latter earning him his first career Academy Award nomination.
Angus William MacLise was an American percussionist, composer, poet, occultist and calligrapher, known as the first drummer for the Velvet Underground.
Noah Baumbach is an American filmmaker. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Squid and the Whale (2005) and is known for making dramatic comedies. He has also written and directed the films Frances Ha (2012), While We're Young (2014), Mistress America (2015), and The Meyerowitz Stories (2017).
Jack Sargeant is a British writer specializing in cult film, underground film, and independent film, as well as subcultures, true crime, and other aspects of the unusual. In addition he is a film programmer, curator, academic and photographer. He has appeared in underground films and performances. He currently lives in Australia.
All Tomorrow's Parties was an organisation based in London that promoted music festivals, concerts and records throughout the world for over ten years. It was founded by Barry Hogan, in 2001 in preparation for the first All Tomorrow's Parties Festival, the line-up of which was curated by Mogwai and took place at Pontins, Camber Sands, England. Named after the song "All Tomorrow's Parties" by The Velvet Underground, the festival exhibited a tendency towards post-rock, avant-garde, and underground hip hop, along with more traditional rock fare presented in an environment more intimate than a giant stadium or huge country field. It was at first a sponsorship-free festival where the organisers and artists stay in the same accommodation as the fans. It claimed to set itself apart from festivals like Reading or Glastonbury by staying intimate, non-corporate and fan-friendly. Another vital difference is that the line-ups were chosen by significant bands or artists, resulting in unorthodox events which often combined acts of all sizes, eras, and genres.
The Boston Underground Film Festival (BUFF) is an annual event held in the Boston area that specializes in alternative film and video. BUFF is the largest underground film festival in New England, spotlighting short films and feature-length films that would not otherwise find an audience. It was the only film festival in the world to give an award for "Most Effectively Offensive" films, an accolade it awarded from its inception until 2017; on the festival's twentieth anniversary, the award was retired and replaced with "Best First Feature Film," marking a shifting focus towards celebrating new voices in filmmaking.
The Brooklyn Underground Film Festival was an annual showcase of typically low-budget, under-distributed or amateur videos and metavideos. The festival was initially held in DUMBO, Brooklyn and later moved to Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The festival ran from 2002-2007.
Edet Belzberg is a documentary filmmaker. She won a 2005 MacArthur Fellowship.
Each Time I Kill is the final film that was written and directed by Doris Wishman. It was shot in 2002 shortly before Wishman's death from lymphoma, and post-production on the teen horror thriller was completed in October 2006. Tiffany Paralta stars as Ellie Saunders, a shy high school senior who finds a magical locket which will allow her to exchange one physical feature with anyone she murders.
Raymond Salvatore Harmon is an American artist who works primarily as a painter.
Sam Green is an American documentary filmmaker. His most recent projects are “live documentaries” in which he narrates a film in-person while musicians perform a live soundtrack. His 2012 project The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller featured a live score by the band Yo La Tengo. Green's 2004 film The Weather Underground was nominated for an Academy Award, broadcast nationally on PBS, and included in the Whitney Biennial.
Dante's Inferno is a 2007 comedy film performed with hand-drawn paper puppets on a toy theater stage. The film was adapted from the book "Dante's Inferno" by Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders, which is a modern update of the canticle Inferno from Dante Alighieri's epic poem Divine Comedy. The film chronicles Dante's journeys through the underworld, guided by Virgil. The head puppeteer was Paul Zaloom and the puppets were designed by Elyse Pignolet and drawn by Sandow Birk. The film premiered January 20, 2007 at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival. The film has also been shown at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Sarasota Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Newport Beach Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival, Silver Lake Film Festival, the Boston Underground Film Festival, and on the Ovation TV cable network.
Ryan Dacko is an independent filmmaker based in Syracuse, New York. Dacko served in the United States Coast Guard and used his free time while on a tour of duty at Antarctica to create the screenplay of And I Lived, a melodrama about high school lovers threatened by peer pressure and class warfare. And I Lived debuted at the B-Movie Film Festival in 2005 and won two awards.
Very Young Girls, directed by David Schisgall and Nina Alvarez, is a documentary and exposé of human trafficking that follows 13- and 14-year-old African-American girls as they are seduced, abused, and sold on New York's streets by pimps; while being treated as adult criminals by police. The film follows the barely adolescent girls in real time, using vérité and intimate interviews with them as they are first lured on to the streets and the dire events which follow. The film also uses startling footage shot by the brazen pimps themselves, giving a rare glimpse into how the cycle of street life begins for many women.
Roger Ross Williams is an American television news, documentary and entertainment director, producer and writer. He directed most notably Music by Prudence that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, about a 21-year-old Zimbabwean singer-songwriter Prudence Mabhena, who was born severely disabled and has struggled to overcome poverty and discrimination. All other seven members of Prudence's band "Liyana" are also disabled. Williams's film God Loves Uganda, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival to enormous critical acclaim. It was shortlisted for a 2014 Academy Award, has won over a dozen awards and screened at over 60 film festivals worldwide. His latest film Life, Animated was nominated for the 2017 Academy Award.
Jim Finn is the writer/director of what have been called "Utopian comedies." His first feature film Interkosmos is about an East German space colonization mission. His second feature La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo is about a day in the life of a Shining Path women's prison cellblock. His third feature The Juche Idea is about an artist residency in North Korea. He has been making short films and videos since 1999. His work is available through the Video Data Bank and Facets DVD.