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Direction connection
Ebertfest shines the spotlight behind the camera
4:00 am Apr 24 - by Tim Peters – Buzz writer
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Virginia Theatre »Address: 203 W. Park St. Champaign, IL 61820
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Ang Lee
(Hulk)
Born in Taiwan in the ’50s, Lee failed the university entrance exam and, instead, enrolled in art school. He came to the U.S. in 1979 and completed a bachelor’s degree in theatre here at the University. He went on for a master’s in film production at NYU’s Tisch School.
Sense and Sensibility (1995) was his first Hollywood production. His 2000 feature Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a Chinese wuxia (martial arts) genre piece, yet won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and became the highest-grossing foreign movie in several countries. Hulk (2003) was met with indifference from critics and audiences.
Lee considered quitting filmmaking after Hulk’s flop, but continued on in 2005 to adapt Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, for which he became the first Asian to win the Best Director Oscar. He followed that with Lust, Caution (2007).
Paul Schrader
(Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters)
Schrader is as respected for his screenwriting and criticism as his film direction. He attended the UCLA Film School and wrote a thesis studying the “transcendental” styles of Ozu, Bresson and Dreyer, which was published and is still in print today. He then became a critic for the Los Angeles Free Press and an editor of Cinema magazine.
Schrader has written numerous screenplays, including four directed by Martin Scorsese: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out the Dead. As a director, he first made Blue Collar (1978), starring Harvey Keitel and Richard Pryor. Some of his other films are American Gigolo (1980), Patty Hearst (1988) and Auto Focus (2002). His biopic, Mishima, about the Japanese author, was nominated for the 1985 Cannes Palm d’Or.
Eran Kolirin
(The Band’s Visit)
An Israeli director making his debut, Kolirin started his career as a writer, winning a screenplay award at the Jerusalem International Film Festival for Tzur Hadassim. He wrote and directed for television until The Band’s Visit (2007), which has won numerous festival awards, including eight prizes from the Israeli Film Academy. He is now working on a second feature, Pathways in the Desert.
Tarsem Singh
(The Cell)
Native to India, Singh studied film at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He earned attention in 1991 for directing REM’s “Losing My Religion” music video and winning awards for his Anne Klein and Levi’s commercials. The Cell (2000) was his feature debut, followed-up with The Fall in 2006. His advertising work is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Tom DiCillo
(Delirious)
After studying film at NYU, DiCillo performed in several small stage and film productions. He acted in and shot Jim Jarmusch’s 1984 film Stranger Than Paradise, also shooting Coffee and Cigarettes three years later. In 1991, DiCillo directed the adaptation of his one-man play, Johnny Suede, which starred a little-known Brad Pitt.
His second feature, Living in Oblivion (1995), starred Steve Buscemi and satirized independent filmmaking. Delirious (2006), also features Buscemi as a paparazzo chasing a pop singer.
Sally Potter
(Yes)
From England, Potter has written and directed both film and theater. She founded her own dance company, has performed in several musical groups and is the current director of the English National Opera’s Carmen production.
In cinema, she started making short films as a part of the London Filmmakers Co-op, receiving praise for Thriller (1979). She has made both features and documentaries since then, with Orlando (1992) — an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel — receiving two Oscar nominations. Yes premiered in 2005 and, with a dialogue in iambic pentameter, tells of a romance between an American woman and a Middle-Eastern man.
Barry Avrich
(Citizen Cohl: The Untold Story, a short film tribute to Dusty Cohl)
Avrich, from Canada, will be presenting a short tribute to Dusty Cohl, a Canadian producer and co-founder of the Toronto International Film Festival, who had been an Ebertfest regular until his recent death. Avrich has directed numerous documentaries, feature films and commercials. He has written two books on film marketing and has been in the ad business for over 20 years.
Bill Forsyth
(Housekeeping)
Forsyth helped found Scottish cinema, creating documentaries in the ’70s and then making its first native film, That Sinking Feeling (1979). He came to Hollywood in the late ’80s, debuting with Housekeeping (1987), but returned to Scotland after the frustrations of filming Being Human. He has retired from directing but continues to write.
Joseph Greco
(Canvas)
As an assistant to James Cameron on Titanic and a director of several short films, Joseph Greco prepared himself for his feature debut, Canvas. The film is autobiographical, reflecting his own childhood with a mentally ill parent. His first work has won several festival awards and brought attention to Greco as an upcoming director and as an artist understanding and portraying mental illness.
Jeff Nichols
(Shotgun Stories)
Another debut director, Nichols grew up in Arkansas and studied film at the North Carolina School of the Arts, graduating in 2001. He has written and directed several shorts and worked on feature productions like The Rough South of Larry Brown and Be Here to Love Me. Shotgun Stories is set in Arkansas and tells of abandoned brothers feuding with their half-siblings after the death of their mutual father.
Taggart Siegel
(The Real Dirt on Farmer John)
A renowned photographer and director, Siegel has been working for over two decades. He has made documentaries about Laotian refugees in suburban Chicago — Blue Collar and Buddha (1986) — and a Hmong shaman resettling from Laos to Appleton, Wisconsin — The Split Horn (2001). His fictional films include Wild Blue Moon (1992) and Shadow of the Pepper Tree (1996), both dealing with mysticism and spirituality in Mexico. His most recent documentary, The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2005), has won over 30 film festival awards and is being distributed worldwide.
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