Barry Shils is an American film director and producer. He is best known for directing and producing the films Motorama and Wigstock: The Movie , and for producing Vampire's Kiss starring Nicolas Cage.
Barry Shils is an American film director and producer. He is best known for directing and producing the films Motorama and Wigstock: The Movie , and for producing Vampire's Kiss starring Nicolas Cage.
Born in Philadelphia, Shils became an integral part of the vibrant downtown New York City art scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A graduate of Yale University, he is the son of academic, Dr. Edward B. Shils (deceased 2004) a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and Founder of the Wharton Entrepreneurial Center. Shils' grandparents on both sides were first generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent. [1] [2]
Shils' films and videos from this period are part of the New York Museum of Modern Art collection. Inspired by the fertile Club 57 scene, titles include "Beehive", [3] "The Jones", "Love Comix", and "Lady Wrestling". [4] [5] Shils and his various collaborators: Steve Brown, Jim Self, Ellie Nagler and Frank Moore were honored by the screening of the films in the 2017-2018 MoMA show “Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art from the East Village, 1978-1983.” [6] [7]
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Shils was active in the independent film scene. In 1989 he produced Vampire's Kiss , a dark comedy written by Joseph Minion. The film stars Nicolas Cage and Jennifer Beals. [8] He has been a member of the Directors Guild of America since 1998. [9]
Shils directed Motorama (also penned by Minion) a surrealistic tale of a 10-year-old boy who drives a 1965 Mustang across a fictional landscape. Motorama features Drew Barrymore, Flea, Jack Nance and Meat Loaf, with a soundtrack by Andy Summers of The Police. [10] [11] Distributed by Columbia-TriStar Home Entertainment, a division of SONY Pictures. [12]
Shils formed Goldstreet Pictures, producing and directing Wigstock: The Movie , a musical documentary chronicling the largest drag performance festival in the world at the time of the AIDS crisis. The movie features performances by Lady Bunny, RuPaul, Lypsinka, Alexis Arquette, Jackie Beat, and Leigh Bowery [13] [14] Distributed by The Samuel Goldwyn Company and MGM Home Entertainment. [15] Included in the collection of the UCLA Film Archive, Wigstock’s 20th Anniversary was celebrated by screenings at The Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater, the Museum of Modern Art and The Anthology Film Archives. [16]
Shils produced and directed 10 episodes of HBO's reality series America Undercover: Real Sex , including "Ladies' Night" and "Doris Wishman: Queen of Sexploitation", a portrait of the trailblazing female film director.
Shils has produced and directed documentaries dealing with social issues. Doing Justice explores alternatives to incarceration for teenagers in the juvenile justice system. His most recent film, Generation A: Portraits of Autism and the Arts, focuses on young artists on the autism spectrum. [17] Also featuring Temple Grandin, Stephen Shore and Joanne Lara (Founder of Autism Movement Therapy). Generation A was broadcast on PBS throughout 2015 – 2017 and received the "Raising Autism Awareness Award" at The Golden Door International Film Festival. [18]
Shils was assistant director, production manager and associate producer on five thrillers written, produced and directed by Larry Cohen, including The Stuff with Michael Moriarity, Island of the Alive , starring Karen Black, and A Return to Salem's Lot .
Douglas Gordon is a Scottish artist. He won the Turner Prize in 1996, the Premio 2000 at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 and the Hugo Boss Prize in 1998. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Wigstock was an annual outdoor drag festival that began in 1984 in Manhattan's East Village that took place on Labor Day. Continuing, with a few gaps, until 2005, the festival would traditionally act as the unofficial end to the summer for the gay community of New York City. After a 12-year gap, the festival was revived by Lady Bunny and Neil Patrick Harris on September 1, 2018 at Pier 17 of the South Street Seaport in New York City. The name refers to the 1969 Woodstock Festival.
Vampire's Kiss is a 1989 American black comedy horror film directed by Robert Bierman and written by Joseph Minion. Starring Nicolas Cage, María Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Beals, and Elizabeth Ashley, the film tells the story of a literary agent who falls in love with a vampire. The film later developed a cult following largely due to Cage's "scorched-earth acting", which has become a source of many Internet memes.
Henry John Corra is an American documentary filmmaker best known for pioneering what he calls "living cinema".
Wigstock: The Movie is a 1995 documentary film focusing on Wigstock, the annual drag music festival that had been held New York City's East Village through the 1980s and 1990s. The film presents a number of performances from the 1994 festival, including Crystal Waters, Deee-Lite, Jackie Beat, Debbie Harry, Leigh Bowery, Joey Arias, Freddie Pendavis, and the Dueling Bankheads. The film also captures a performance by RuPaul at the height of his mainstream fame during the 1990s.
Bob Giraldi is an American film and television director, educator, and restaurateur. He is known for directing the film Dinner Rush (2000) and the music video for Michael Jackson's "Beat It" (1983). Giraldi has been inducted into the Art Director's Hall of Fame, one of the few film directors to be honored; and, in 2014, was the first director ever to be inducted to the Advertising Hall of Fame. His work has garnered several London International Awards, Cannes Advertising Awards, NY International Awards, Addy Awards, Chicago Film Festival Awards, and dozens of Clio Awards. He has been named one of the 101 Stars Behind 100 Years of Advertising.
Aaron Rose is an American film director, artist, exhibition curator and writer. Rose is known as the co-director of Beautiful Losers, a film that focuses on an art movement which includes artists such as Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Steven "Espo" Powers, Chris Johanson, Harmony Korine and Shepard Fairey.
Iris Barry was a film critic and curator. In the 1920s she helped establish the original London Film Society, and was the first curator of the film department of the Museum of Modern Art, New York City in 1935.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead is a 2009 American independent film written and directed by Jordan Galland. The film's title refers to a fictitious play-within-the-movie, which is a comic reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and its aftermath and whose title is a reference to the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The cast includes Devon Aoki, John Ventimiglia, Kris Lemche, Ralph Macchio, Jeremy Sisto and Waris Ahluwalia. The film stars Jake Hoffman. An original musical score was composed and performed by Sean Lennon.
Peggy Ahwesh is an American experimental filmmaker and video artist. She received her B.F.A. at Antioch College. A bricoleur who has created both narrative works and documentaries, some projects are scripted and others incorporate improvised performance. She makes use of sync sound, found footage, digital animation, and Pixelvision video. Her work is primarily an investigation of cultural identity and the role of the subject in various genres. Her interests include genre; women, sexuality and feminism; reenactment; and artists' books. Her works have been shown worldwide, including in San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, London, Toronto, Rotterdam, and Créteil, France. Starting in 1990, she has taught at Bard College as a Professor of Film and Electronic Arts. Her teaching interests include: experimental media, history of the non-fiction film, and women in film.
BENT IMAGE LAB is a production company and animation studio specializing in story development, television, commercials, visual effects, music videos, short films, experimental techniques and tech development in augmented reality (AR). Located in Portland, Oregon, the company was founded in 2002 by partners David Daniels, Ray Di Carlo, and Chel White.
Reto Salimbeni is a filmmaker and director known for his features and commercials. His films include Urban Safari, The Day I Was My Father and One Way.
Braden King is a New York–based filmmaker, photographer and visual artist. His feature film, Here (2011), starring Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal, premiered at the 2011 Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals and was distributed theatrically by Strand Releasing in 2012. A multimedia installation version of the project, Here [ The Story Sleeps ], premiered at The Museum of Modern Art in 2010 and toured internationally with live soundtrack accompaniment by composer Michael Krassner and Boxhead Ensemble. King's previous work includes the feature film Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks It's Back, the award-winning short film Home Movie and music videos for Glen Hansard, Sparklehorse, Sonic Youth, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Dirty Three.
Geek Maggot Bingo is a 1983 comedy horror film directed by Nick Zedd, who also scripted and shot the film.
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.
Jason and Shirley is a 2015 drama comedy fantasy film directed by Stephen Winter. The film is a historical re-imagining that revisits the making of Shirley Clarke's 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason.
Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe is a 2016 American pseudoscience propaganda film alleging a cover-up by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of a purported link between the MMR vaccine and autism. According to Variety, the film "purports to investigate the claims of a senior scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who revealed that the CDC had allegedly manipulated and destroyed data on an important study about autism and the MMR vaccine"; critics derided Vaxxed as an anti-vaccine propaganda film.
Macbeth is a 1982 Hungarian television film adapted, edited and directed by Béla Tarr. György Cserhalmi stars Macbeth while Erzsébet Kútvölgyi portrays Lady Macbeth. The film is composed of only two shots: The first is five minutes long, the second 57 minutes long.
Henny Garfunkel is an American street and portrait photographer based in New York City. Since 1993, Garfunkel has been photographing at major film festivals including Cannes, Toronto and Sundance Film Festival where she was branded its "reigning queen." She is known for her portraits of actors and directors. Her photographs have been published in The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, BBC, Vogue and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art.
Wig is a 2019 documentary film by Chris Moukarbel about Wigstock, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and later was telecasted on HBO on June 18, 2019.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
