Alan Berliner

Last updated
Alan Berliner
Formen des Dokumentarischen Alan Berliner Viennale 2013.jpg
Born (1956-10-11) October 11, 1956 (age 67)
Alma mater Binghamton University
Occupation Filmmaker

Alan Berliner (born 1956) is an American independent filmmaker. The New York Times has described Berliner's work as "powerful, compelling and bittersweet... full of juicy conflict and contradiction, innovative in their cinematic technique, unpredictable in their structures... Alan Berliner illustrates the power of fine art to transform life." [1]

Contents

Biography

Berliner was born in Brooklyn, and raised in Queens. Berliner earned in 1977 a BA with highest honors, from Binghamton University, cinema, and in 1979 MFA (with highest honors) from the University of Oklahoma, School of Art. He is currently a faculty member at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where he teaches a course entitled, "Experiments in Time, Light and Motion."

Berliner's experimental documentary films, First Cousin Once Removed (2013), Wide Awake, The Sweetest Sound (2001), Nobody's Business (1996), Intimate Stranger (1991), and The Family Album (1986), have been broadcast all over the world, and received awards, prizes, and retrospectives at many major international film festivals. The San Francisco International Film Festival called Berliner, "America's foremost cinematic essayist." The Florida Film Festival called him "the modern master of personal documentary filmmaking." Over the years, Berliner's films have become part of the core curriculum for documentary filmmaking and film history classes at universities worldwide, and are in the permanent collections of many film societies, festivals, libraries, colleges and museums. All of his films are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

In July 2013, Berliner was awarded the Freedom of Expression Award by the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. In 2006, the International Documentary Association honored him with an International Trailblazer Award "for creativity, innovation, originality, and breakthrough in the field of documentary cinema." Berliner had also been a recipient of a Distinguished Achievement Award from the IDA in 1993. In 2002, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture presented him with a Cultural Achievement Award in the Arts, and he was the recipient of the Storyteller Award from the Taos Talking Picture Film Festival in 2001. Berliner's films have won awards at many major international film festivals, and he has received retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, and many other museums and film festivals all over the world.

Berliner is a recipient of Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Jerome Foundation Fellowships, and has received multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He's won three Emmy Awards and received six Emmy nominations from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Berliner has also served on several non-profit foundation funding panels and various international film festival juries, including the 2007 Sundance Film Festival Documentary Jury. He is on the Board of Directors of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Martha's Vineyard Film Festival.

Films

Artwork

In addition to his work in film, Berliner has also produced a substantial body of photographic, audio and video installation works. His early "para-cinematic" photographs, scrolls and collages were exhibited at the Hunter College Art Gallery, The Collective for Living Cinema, and The Munson Williams Proctor Institute in the early eighties. Cine-Matrix (1977) part of an exhibition titled, Franes: Two Dimensional Work by Film Artists, held at the Hunter College Art Gallery in 1980 was reviewed in Art Forum.

Audio / Video / Installations / Para-cinema

Installations

In 1987, during a two-month artist-in-residency at Sculpture Space in Utica, New York, Berliner premiered a sound performance work titled Microfilm and Others. His video sculpture, Late City Edition (1993) was shown as part of a curated exhibition titled, The Concrete Signal: Video as Sculpture at Gallery 148 in October, 1993, and at the Fine Arts Gallery at Wake Forest University in February, 1995. A selection of his audio/video installation work was included as part of the curated exhibition, Body & Technology: International Technology Art in June 1995, held at the Dong Ah Gallery in Seoul, Korea.

Audiofile (1993) and Aviary (1993), both ground-breaking interactive audio installations were exhibited at the Walter Reade Theater Gallery at Lincoln Center and at Anthology Film Archives (Seoul/Nymax) in 1994. His first one-person exhibition, Found Sound: Audio & Video Installation Works featuring the premieres of Critical Mass (1996) and The Red Thread (1996), was held at Sculpture Center Gallery in New York City in March 1996.

Berliner's interactive video installation, Gathering Stones (1999), based on the tradition of placing rocks on tombstones when visiting Jewish cemeteries, was commissioned for the exhibition, To The Rescue, Eight Artists in an Archive, which premiered at the International Center of Photography Midtown in New York City in February, 1999, and will travel to art museums in Miami, Houston and San Francisco. His second one-person exhibition, The Art of War, held at The Stephen Gang Gallery in March, 1999, featured an innovative interactive sound/image interface using images projected from the ceiling onto a "screen" composed of 150 small white audio speakers arranged in a grid on the gallery floor.

In 2002, Berliner was an artist in residence at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where his interactive multi-media installation, The Language of Names opened in February 2002 and ran through October 2002. He was also commissioned to create a large-scale interactive sculpture based on Gathering Stones for Holocaust Museum Houston which was on exhibition from March through August 2002.

Awards and honors

Awards and Fellowships

First Cousin Once Removed: Special awards and honors

Nobody's Business: Special awards and honors

Intimate Stranger: Special awards and honors

The Family Album: Special awards and honors

Everywhere at Once (1985)

Natural History (1983)

Editing Awards

Personal life

Berliner lives in Manhattan with his wife Shari and son Eli. On a personal level, he struggled with insomnia most of his life leading to a domino effect of painful challenges associated with always feeling tired and zombie-like.[ citation needed ] His relationship with late evening hours is conflicting because on one hand, it's the time of day he's most tortured struggling to fall asleep tossing and turning in turmoil, however, on the other hand, it's the time he feels most invigorated and creative allowing him to create all of his films. As a result of this, Alan created all his films in the night.[ citation needed ]

Bibliography

To learn more about Berliner, see the book The Man Without the Camera: Alan Berliner's Cinema, edited by Efren Cuevas and Carlos Muguiro (2002). The book, in English and Spanish, is available online for free, courtesy of the publisher, at http://dadun.unav.edu/handle/10171/28018 or at http://alanberliner.com/press_and_publications.php?pag_id=87

On his latest film, First Cousin Once Removed, see the article by María del Rincón, Efrén Cuevas and Marta Torregrosa, "The Representation of Personal Memory in Alan Berliner's First Cousin Once Removed", Studies in Documentary Film, 2018, vol. 12, n. 1, pp. 16-27. Postprint version here. Available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YntGfr4CzMdr6GrMDzb8/full

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julie Taymor</span> American film and theatre director and writer (born 1952)

Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for her direction and costume design. Her film Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for Taymor's composition "Burn It Blue." She also directed the 2007 jukebox musical film Across the Universe, based on the music of the Beatles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alanis Obomsawin</span> American-Canadian Abenaki artist and filmmaker

Alanis Obomsawin, is an Abenaki American-Canadian filmmaker, singer, artist, and activist primarily known for her documentary films. Born in New Hampshire, United States and raised primarily in Quebec, Canada, she has written and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations issues. Obomsawin is a member of Film Fatales independent women filmmakers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauren Greenfield</span> American photographer and filmmaker

Lauren Greenfield is an American artist, documentary photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She has published four photographic monographs, directed four documentary features, produced four traveling exhibitions, and published in magazines throughout the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Gazecki</span>

William Gazecki is an American film director and former sound mixer best known for his documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement (1997), which earned a News & Documentary Emmy Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was awarded the International Documentary Association's Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award, and won awards at both the Melbourne International Film Festival and the Vancouver International Film Festival. Gazecki was nominated another three times for an Emmy award, and for an Academy Award in 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ondi Timoner</span> American film director

Ondi Doane Timoner is an American filmmaker and the founder and chief executive officer of Interloper Films, a production company located in Pasadena, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Péter Forgács</span>

Péter Forgács is a Hungarian media artist and independent filmmaker. He is best known for his "Private Hungary" series of award winning films based on home movies from the 1930s and 1960s, which document ordinary lives that were soon to be ruptured by an extraordinary historical trauma that occurs off screen.

Arthur Dong is an American filmmaker and author whose work centers on Asia America and anti-gay prejudice. He was raised in San Francisco, California, graduating from Galileo High School in June 1971. He received his BA in film from San Francisco State University and also holds a Directing Fellow Certificate from the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies. In 2007, SFSU named Dong its Alumnus of the year “for his continued success in the challenging arena of independent documentary filmmaking and his longstanding commitment to social justice."

John Francis Carluccio is an American filmmaker, artist, and inventor. Carluccio is a two-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker who is best known for documenting obscure pockets of urban society and the creative process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matej Mináč</span> Slovak film director (born 1961)

Matej Mináč is a Slovak film director. His brother is a Canadian mathematician Ján Mináč. Matej Minac has directed three films about Sir Nicholas Winton, a Briton who organized the rescue of 669 Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport: the drama All My Loved Ones(1999), the documentary The Power of Good: Nicholas Winton (2002), which won an Emmy Award, the documentary with feature reenactments Nicky's Family (2011) and Children Saved from the Nazis: The Story of Sir Nicholas Winton (2016). Minac also made a full-length documentary with feature reenactments Through the Eyes of the Photographer (2015) on the popular Slovak photographer Zuzana Minacova, his mother.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Allen Harris</span>

Thomas Allen Harris is a critically acclaimed, interdisciplinary artist who explores family, identity, and spirituality in a participatory practice. Since 1990, Harris has remixed archives from multiple origins throughout his work, challenging hierarchy within historical narratives through the use of pioneering documentary and research methodologies that center vernacular image and collaboration. He is currently working on a new television show, Family Pictures USA, which takes a radical look at neighborhoods and cities of the United States through the lens of family photographs, collaborative performances, and personal testimony sourced from their communities..

Katharina Otto-Bernstein is a German-American filmmaker and producer. She is best known for The Price of Everything, Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, Absolute Wilson, When Night Falls Over Moscow, The Need for Speed and Beautopia, as well as the author of an intimate memoir of theatre and opera director Robert Wilson, Absolute Wilson - The Biography.

Marion "Muffie" Meyer is an American director, whose productions include documentaries, theatrical features, television series and children’s films. Films that she directed are the recipients of two Emmy Awards, CINE Golden Eagles, the Japan Prize, Christopher Awards, the Freddie Award, the Columbia-DuPont, and the Peabody Awards. Her work has been selected for festivals in Japan, Greece, London, Edinburgh, Cannes, Toronto, Chicago and New York, and she has been twice nominated by the Directors Guild of America.

Nina Rosenblum is an American documentary film and television producer and director and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America. Italian Fotoleggendo magazine said Rosenblum “is known in the United States as one of the most important directors of the investigative documentary”.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arlington International Film Festival</span>

The Arlington International Film Festival (AIFF) is an annual nonprofit film festival dedicated to promoting and increasing multicultural awareness and showcases world cinema and independent films in their original language with English subtitles. Independent film producers, directors and actors within the US and abroad are invited to participate in engaging panel discussions and Q&A sessions after the screenings. Each year the festival greets more than 2,000 movie aficionados and shows about fifty films from all over the world with an impressive lineup of premieres. The Arlington International Film Festival also includes a year-round events such as poster contest competitions, pre-festival screenings and art exhibitions with local artists and performances by musicians, singers and dancers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">21st International Emmy Awards</span>

The 21st annual International Emmy Awards took place on November 22, 1993 in New York City. The award ceremony, presented by the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (IATAS), honors all programming produced and originally aired outside the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi</span> American film director

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an American documentary filmmaker. She was the director, along with her husband, Jimmy Chin, for the film Free Solo, which won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film profiled Alex Honnold and his free solo climb of El Capitan in June 2017. Their first scripted film venture was Nyad - a biopic chronicling Diana Nyad's quest to be the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida.

Motto Pictures is a documentary production company based in Brooklyn, New York specializing in producing and executive producing documentary features. Motto secures financing, builds distribution strategies, and creatively develops films, and has produced over 25 feature documentaries and won numerous awards.

Shevaun Mizrahi is a Turkish-American documentary filmmaker. She received a Jury Special Mention Award at the Locarno Film Festival 2017 for her documentary film Distant Constellation among many other awards including the Best Picture Prize at the Jeonju International Film Festival 2018 and the FIPRESCI Critics Prize at the Viennale 2018. Indiewire wrote, “Distant Constellation is one of the more exciting achievements in nonfiction cinema in recent memory." She was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Film in 2015 and is the recipient of a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. In December 2018, she received the Best Cinematography Award from the International Documentary Association.

<i>Procession</i> (film) 2021 American documentary film

Procession is an 2021 American documentary film, directed and edited by Robert Greene. It follows six men, who suffered abuse by priests, looking for peace.

References

  1. The New York Times, [ citation needed ]
  2. This artwork can be found in "Artists". The repository of the Experimental Television Center. Cornell University Library. Archived from the original on 2017-01-05.