Greatest Directors--D
This is a ranked list of directors whose last name begins with a "D."
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Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney, a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of his childhood. At age 16, during World War I, he faked his age to join the American Red Cross. He soon returned home, where he won a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. There, he met a fellow animator, Ub Iwerks. The two soon set up their own company. In the early 1920s, they made a series of animated shorts for the Newman theater chain, entitled "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams". Their company soon went bankrupt, however.
The two then went to Hollywood in 1923. They started work on a new series, about a live-action little girl who journeys to a world of animated characters. Entitled the "Alice Comedies", they were distributed by M.J. Winkler (Margaret). Walt was backed up financially only by Winkler and his older brother Roy O. Disney, who remained his business partner for the rest of his life. Hundreds of "Alice Comedies" were produced between 1923 and 1927, before they lost popularity.
Walt then started work on a series around a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This series was successful, but in 1928, Walt discovered that M.J. Winkler and her husband, Charles Mintz, had stolen the rights to the character away from him. They had also stolen all his animators, except for Ub Iwerks. While taking the train home, Walt started doodling on a piece of paper. The result of these doodles was a mouse named Mickey. With only Walt and Ub to animate, and Walt's wife Lillian Disney (Lilly) and Roy's wife Edna Disney to ink in the animation cells, three Mickey Mouse cartoons were quickly produced. The first two didn't sell, so Walt added synchronized sound to the last one, Steamboat Willie (1928), and it was immediately picked up. With Walt as the voice of Mickey, it premiered to great success. Many more cartoons followed. Walt was now in the big time, but he didn't stop creating new ideas.
In 1929, he created the 'Silly Symphonies', a cartoon series that didn't have a continuous character. They were another success. One of them, Flowers and Trees (1932), was the first cartoon to be produced in color and the first cartoon to win an Oscar; another, Three Little Pigs (1933), was so popular it was often billed above the feature films it accompanied. The Silly Symphonies stopped coming out in 1939, but Mickey and friends, (including Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and plenty more), were still going strong and still very popular.
In 1934, Walt started work on another new idea: a cartoon that ran the length of a feature film. Everyone in Hollywood was calling it "Disney's Folly", but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was anything but, winning critical raves, the adoration of the public, and one big and seven little special Oscars for Walt. Now Walt listed animated features among his ever-growing list of accomplishments. While continuing to produce cartoon shorts, he also started producing more of the animated features. Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942) were all successes; not even a flop like Fantasia (1940) and a studio animators' strike in 1941 could stop Disney now.
In the mid 1940s, he began producing "packaged features", essentially a group of shorts put together to run feature length, but by 1950 he was back with animated features that stuck to one story, with Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953). In 1950, he also started producing live-action films, with Treasure Island (1950). These began taking on greater importance throughout the 50s and 60s, but Walt continued to produce animated features, including Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).
In 1955 he opened a theme park in southern California: Disneyland. It was a place where children and their parents could take rides, just explore, and meet the familiar animated characters, all in a clean, safe environment. It was another great success. Walt also became one of the first producers of films to venture into television, with his series The Magical World of Disney (1954) which he began in 1954 to promote his theme park. He also produced The Mickey Mouse Club (1955) and Zorro (1957). To top it all off, Walt came out with the lavish musical fantasy Mary Poppins (1964), which mixed live-action with animation. It is considered by many to be his magnum opus. Even after that, Walt continued to forge onward, with plans to build a new theme park and an experimental prototype city in Florida.
He did not live to see the culmination of those plans, however; in 1966, he developed lung cancer brought on by his lifelong chain-smoking. He died of a heart attack following cancer surgery on December 15, 1966 at age 65. But not even his death, it seemed, could stop him. Roy carried on plans to build the Florida theme park, and it premiered in 1971 under the name Walt Disney World. His company continues to flourish, still producing animated and live-action films and overseeing the still-growing empire started by one man: Walt Disney, who will never be forgotten.- Writer
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The illegitimate son of a Danish farmer and his Swedish housekeeper, Carl Theodor Dreyer was born in Copenhagen on the 3th of February, 1889. He spent his early years in various foster homes before being adopted by the Dreyers at the age of two. Contrary to popular belief (perhaps nourished by the fact that his films often deal with religious themes) Dreyer did not receive a strict Lutheran upbringing, but was raised in a household that embraced modern ideas: in his spare time the adoptive father was an avid photographer, and the Dreyers voted for The Danish Social Democrates. When he was baptized the reasoning was culturally, not religiously motivated. Dreyer's childhood was an unhappy one. He did not feel his adoptive parents' love (especially the mother), and longed for his biological mother, whom he never knew.
After working as a journalist, he entered the film industry, and advanced from reading scripts to directing films himself. In the silent era his output was large, but it quickly diminished with the arrival of the talkie. In his lifetime he was recognized as being a fanatical perfectionist amongst producers, and thus difficult to work with. His career was dogged by problems with the financing of his films, which led to large gaps in his output - and after the critics, too, denounced Vampyr (1932), he returned to journalism in 1932, and became a cinema manager in 1952 - though he still made features up to the mid- 1960s, a few years before his death. His films are typically slow, intense studies of human psychology, usually of people undergoing extreme personal or religious crises. He is now regarded as the greatest director ever to emerge from Denmark.- Producer
- Director
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His parents Henry C. DeMille and Beatrice DeMille were playwrights. His father died when he was 12, and his mother supported the family by opening a school for girls and a theatrical company. Too young to enlist in the Spanish-American War, Cecil followed his brother William C. de Mille to the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, making his stage debut in 1900. For twelve years he was actor/manager of his mother's theatrical company. In 1913, Jesse L. Lasky, Samuel Goldwyn and DeMille formed the Lasky Film Company (which years later evolved into Paramount Pictures), and the next year went west to California and produced the successful six reeler, The Squaw Man (1914), of historical significance as the first feature length film produced in Hollywood. He championed the switch from short to feature-length films and is often credited with making Hollywood the motion picture capital of the world. Rather than putting his money into known stars, he emphasized production values. He also developed stars, notably Gloria Swanson. He produced and directed 70 films and was involved in many more. Many of his films were romantic sexual comedies (he is supposed to have believed that Americans were curious only about money and sex). His best-known were biblical/religious epics: Joan the Woman (1916), The Ten Commandments (1923), The King of Kings (1927), The Sign of the Cross (1932), The Crusades (1935), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956). From 1936 to 1945 he hosted and directed the hour-long "Lux Radio Theatre", which brought the actors and stories of many movies to the airwaves and further established him as the symbol of Hollywood. He appeared as himself in the classic Sunset Boulevard (1950) with his former star Gloria Swanson as the fictitious disturbed former silent film actress Norma Desmond. His niece Agnes de Mille was the acclaimed choreographer of both the original Broadway production and film version of Oklahoma! (1955).- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Guillermo del Toro was born October 9, 1964 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Raised by his Catholic grandmother, del Toro developed an interest in filmmaking in his early teens. Later, he learned about makeup and effects from the legendary Dick Smith (The Exorcist (1973)) and worked on making his own short films. At the age of 21, del Toro executive produced his first feature, Dona Herlinda and Her Son (1985). Del Toro spent almost 10 years as a makeup supervisor, and formed his own company, Necropia in the early 1980s. He also produced and directed Mexican television programs at this time, and taught film.
Del Toro got his first big break when Cronos (1992) won nine Ariel Awards (the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars), then went on to win the International Critics Week Prize at Cannes. Following this success, del Toro made his first Hollywood film, Mimic (1997), starring Mira Sorvino.
Del Toro had some unfortunate experiences working with a demanding Hollywood studio on Mimic (1997), and returned to Mexico to form his own production company, The Tequila Gang.
Next for del Toro, was The Devil's Backbone (2001), a Spanish Civil War ghost story. The film was hailed by critics and audiences alike, and del Toro decided to give Hollywood another try. In 2002, he directed the Wesley Snipes vampire sequel, Blade II (2002).
On a roll, Del Toro followed up Blade II (2002) with another successful comic-book inspired film, Hellboy (2004), starring one of Del Toro's favorite actors, Ron Perlman.
Del Toro is divorced, has a daughter and a son and lives in Los Angeles and Toronto.- Director
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Born in Ludwigshafen, Germany, Wilhelm Dieterle was the youngest of nine children of parents Jacob and Berthe Dieterle. They lived in poverty, and when he was old enough to work, young Wilhelm earned money as a carpenter and a scrap dealer. He dreamed of better things, though, and theater caught his eye as a teen. By the age of 16 he had joined a traveling theater company. He was ambitious and handsome, both of which opened the door to leading romantic roles in theater productions. Though he had acted in his first film in 1913, it was six more years before he made another one. In that year he was noticed by producer/director/designer/impresario Max Reinhardt, the most influential proponent of expressionism in theater; while in Berlin, Reinhardt hired him as an actor for his productions. Dieterle resumed German film acting in 1920, becoming a popular and successful romantic lead and featured character actor in the mix of German expressionist/Gothic and nature/romanticism genres that imbued much of German cinema in the silent era. He was interested in directing even more than acting, however, and he had the iconic Reinhardt to provide inspiration. Dieterle had acted in nearly 20 movies before he also began directing in 1923, his first female lead being a young Marlene Dietrich.
With his wife Charlotte Hagenbruch he started his own film production . He was said to have tired of acting; he appeared in nearly 50 films over the course of his career, mainly in the 1920s, and in several of his films he also functioned as director. As an actor he worked with some of the greatest names in German film, such as directors Paul Leni (in Waxworks (1924) [Waxworks]) and F.W. Murnau (in Faust (1926)) and actors Conrad Veidt and Emil Jannings. By 1930, however, he had emigrated to the US--now rechristened as William Dieterle--with an offer from Warner Brothers to direct their German-language versions of the studio's popular hits for the German market. In that capacity he made Those Who Dance (1930), The Way of All Men (1930) and Die heilige Flamme (1931) (aka "The Holy Flames"). He even stood before the camera for another of these, Dämon des Meeres (1931) (aka "Demon of the Sea", a version of "Moby Dick") in 1931, in which he played Capt. Ahab. The film was directed by another European who was soon to become one of Warners' most successful directors: the Hungarian Michael Curtiz.
Having taken to the Hollywood brand of filmmaking with ease--helped by his own brilliance in defining and executing the telling of a story--into 1931, he was soon promoted to directing some of Warners' "regular" films (his first, The Last Flight (1931), is now regarded as a masterwork) and he wold average directing six pictures a year for the studio through 1934. In that year Reinhardt came to the US, the Nazi threat finally having driven him off the Continent. He arrived with a flourish, ready to stage William Shakespeare's "A Midsummers Night's Dream"--an extravaganza at the Hollywood Bowl that would become legend. It was impressive enough to interest the execs of Warner Bros. They opted for a film version in 1935 with the great Reinhardt--even studio boss Jack L. Warner knew who he was--reunited with his disciple, Dieterle, as co-director. Reinhardt knew nothing about Hollywood and had to learn via Dieterle's diplomacy the differences between the overemphasis of stage and the subtlety of the camera. He learned from other directors as well about the realities of making films, in particular ratchet down the tendency that stage directors had to let their actors perform "too" much. It was all for naught, however, as the film was a major box-office flop, but it was one of the great moments in the evolution of film. Dieterle would direct Paul Muni for Warners in three first-rate bio movies: The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Juarez (1939) and all received Oscar nominations. After that Dieterle moved on to do The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) at RKO with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo. This was one of Dieterle's best efforts, both in its romantic style and the great dark scenes of the Parisian medieval underworld with dramatic minimal lighting that gave vent to his expressionist roots.
Through the 1940s Dieterle moved around among Hollywood's studios, turning out vigorously wrought pictures, such as his two 1940 bios with Edward G. Robinson at Warner's. He became associated with independent producer David O. Selznick and actor Joseph Cotten, first with his direction of I'll Be Seeing You (1944). His romantic fires as a director had been restoked, as it were, and kept burning in the subsequent series of films with them which included the wonderful acting talents of Selznick's soon-to-be-wife (1949), Jennifer Jones: Love Letters (1945), Duel in the Sun (1946)--for which he shared directing but not credit with King Vidor--and the ethereal Portrait of Jennie (1948). "Jennie" was one of Dieterle's masterpieces, bringing into play a fusion of all his artistic fonts. The romantic fantasy with edges of darkness from the novel by Robert Nathan was just the vehicle to challenge Dieterle. His use of light and dark and gauzed--at one point the textured field of a painting canvas--backdrops conveyed the dreamlike state and netherworld atmosphere of the story of lovers from different times. Certainly the film influenced others to follow with similar themes.
Through the 1950s Dieterle's work--two more with Joseph Cotten--though sturdily in the director's hands, came off like good Hollywood fare, but were inspired more by the films' tight shooting schedules than by any artistic pretensions. His output during that decade was small, and that was partly due to bane of McCarthyism. He was never blacklisted as such, but his film Blockade (1938) was too libertarian to keep him completely away from the shadow of suspicion as a "socialist" / "communist" sympathizer. In 1958 he returned to Germany and directed a few films there and in Italy before retiring in 1965.
Though regrettably not as well known as his German and European directorial compatriots in Hollywood, he had great artistic style and worked with much energy in providing some of Hollywood's and the world's crown jewels of cinematic art.- Director
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Brian De Palma is one of the well-known directors who spear-headed the new movement in Hollywood during the 1970s. He is known for his many films that go from violent pictures, to Hitchcock-like thrillers. Born on September 11, 1940, De Palma was born in Newark, New Jersey in an Italian-American family. Originally entering university as a physics student, De Palma became attracted to films after seeing such classics as Citizen Kane (1941). Enrolling in Sarah Lawrence College, he found lasting influences from such varied teachers as Alfred Hitchcock and Andy Warhol.
At first, his films comprised of such black-and-white films as To Bridge This Gap (1969). He then discovered a young actor whose fame would influence Hollywood forever. In 1968, De Palma made the comedic film Greetings (1968) starring Robert De Niro in his first ever credited film role. The two followed up immediately with the films The Wedding Party (1969) and Hi, Mom! (1970).
After making such small-budget thrillers such as Sisters (1972) and Obsession (1976), De Palma was offered the chance to direct a film based on Stephen King's classic novel "Carrie". The story deals with a tormented teenage girl who finds she has the power of telekinesis. The film starred Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie and John Travolta, and was for De Palma, a chance to try out the split screen technique for which he would later become famous.
Carrie (1976) was a massive success, and earned the two lead females (Laurie and Spacek) Oscar nominations. The film was praised by most critics, and De Palma's reputation was now permanently secured. He followed up this success with the horror film The Fury (1978), the comedic film Home Movies (1979) (both these films featured Kirk Douglas), the crime thriller Dressed to Kill (1980) starring Michael Caine and Angie Dickinson, and another crime thriller entitled Blow Out (1981) starring John Travolta.
His next major success was the controversial, ultra-violent film Scarface (1983). Written by Oliver Stone and starring Al Pacino, the film concerned Cuban immigrant Tony Montana's rise to power in the United States through the drug trade. While being a critical failure, the film was a major success commercially.
Moving on from Scarface (1983), De Palma made two more movies before landing another one of his now-classics: The Untouchables (1987), starring old friend Robert De Niro in the role of Chicago gangster Al Capone. Also starring in the film were Kevin Costner as the man who commits himself to bring Capone down, and Sean Connery, an old policeman who helps Costner's character to form a group known as the Untouchables. The film was one of De Palma's most successful films, earning Connery an Oscar, and gave Ennio Morricone a nomination for Best Score.
After The Untouchables (1987), De Palma made the Vietnam film Casualties of War (1989) starring Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn. The film focuses on a new soldier who is helpless to stop his dominating sergeant from kidnapping a Vietnamese girl with the help of the coerced members of the platoon. The film did reasonably well at the box office, but it was his next film that truly displayed the way he could make a hit and a disaster within a short time. The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) starred a number of well-known actors such as Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman, however it was still a commercial flop and earned him two Razzie nominations.
But the roller coaster success that De Palma had gotten so far did not let him down. He made the horror film Raising Cain (1992), and the criminal drama Carlito's Way (1993) starring Al Pacino and Sean Penn. The latter film is about a former criminal just released from prison that is trying to avoid his past and move on. It was in the year 1996 that brought one of his most well-known movies. This was the suspense-filled Mission: Impossible (1996) starring Tom Cruise and Jon Voight.
Following up this film was the interesting but unsuccessful film Snake Eyes (1998) starring Nicolas Cage as a detective who finds himself in the middle of a murder scene at a boxing ring. De Palma continued on with the visually astounding but equally unsuccessful film Mission to Mars (2000) which earned him another Razzie nomination. He met failure again with the crime thriller Femme Fatale (2002), the murder conspiracy The Black Dahlia (2006), and the controversial film Redacted (2007) which deals with individual stories from the war in Iraq.
Brian De Palma may be down for the moment, but if his box office history has taught us anything, it is that he always returns with a major success that is remembered for years and years afterwards.- Director
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Jonathan Demme was born on 22 February 1944 in Baldwin, Long Island, New York, USA. He was a director and producer, known for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Rachel Getting Married (2008) and Philadelphia (1993). He was married to Joanne Howard and Evelyn Purcell. He died on 26 April 2017 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
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Vittorio De Sica grew up in Naples, and started out as an office clerk in order to raise money to support his poor family. He was increasingly drawn towards acting, and made his screen debut while still in his teens, joining a stage company in 1923. By the late 1920s he was a successful matinee idol of the Italian theatre, and repeated that achievement in Italian movies, mostly light comedies. He turned to directing in 1940, making comedies in a similar vein, but with his fifth film The Children Are Watching Us (1943), he revealed hitherto unsuspected depths and an extraordinarily sensitive touch with actors, especially children. It was also the first film he made with the writer Cesare Zavattini with whom he would subsequently make Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948), heartbreaking studies of poverty in postwar Italy which won special Oscars before the foreign film category was officially established. After the box-office disaster of Umberto D. (1952), a relentlessly bleak study of the problems of old age, he returned to directing lighter work, appearing in front of the camera more frequently. Although Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) won him another Oscar, it was generally accepted that his career as one of the great directors was over. However, just before he died he made The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), which won him yet another Oscar, and his final film A Brief Vacation (1973). He died following the removal of a cyst from his lungs.- Director
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Álex de la Iglesia is one of the most popular and respected European filmmakers of his generation. Considered a genre of his own, based on his skill and originality in a range of cinematographic art styles, he has currently finished shooting the second season of "30 Coins", the successful HBO Max series. 2022 saw the release of two feature films directed by de la Iglesia: the slasher "Veneciafrenia" (part of The Fear Collection) and the romantic road movie "Four's a Crowd", alongside "Venus" by Jaume Balagueró, which was produced by Álex de la Iglesia, in association with Sony Pictures and Amazon Prime Video.
Born in Bilbao, Álex de la Iglesia started out in the world of comics and he has never lost this side to him throughout his career in film. He began as a director in "Mutant Action" and "The Day of the Beast", movies that changed the face of Spanish fantastique genre forever. Among his most renowned works are "The Last Circus" - praised by The New York Times the same day it was released in the US -"Ferpect Crime", "Witching and Bitching", "My Big Night" and "The Bar".
With Pokeepsie Films, the production company De la Iglesia created with his wife, prestigious producer Carolina Bang, he has contributed as a producer to nurturing a new generation of filmmakers, such as Paul Urkijo, Eduardo Casanova, Zoe Berriatúa, Juanfer Andrés and Esteban Roel.
With Bang and De La Iglesia as producers, Pokeepsie Films had great success with movies such as "70 Big Ones" by Koldo Serra and "Perfect Strangers" and "Veneciafrenia", both directed by Álex de la Iglesia himself. "Four's a crowd" is his latest release as a feature director, while as a producer he has also been part of "La Pietà", by Eduardo Casanova, and the aforementioned "Venus", directed by Jaume Balagueró.
In 2023, Pokeepsie Films has released the HBO Max series, "Headless chickens", starring Hugo Silva, the Prime Video original feature film "My fault" (the most watched non-English language movie in the history of the platform), and has started shooting "1992", a Netflix series directed by Álex de la Iglesia.- Director
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- Producer
Inspired by Fred Astaire's dancing in Flying Down to Rio (1933), Stanley Donen (pronounced 'Dawn-en') attended dance classes from the age of ten. He later recalled that the only thing he wanted to be was a tap dancer.
He was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Helen Pauline (Cohen) and Mordecai Moses Donen, a dress-shop manager, of Russian-Jewish and German-Jewish descent. Donen debuted on Broadway at seventeen. While working as an assistant choreographer in 1941, he met and befriended the actor Gene Kelly, Kelly being the brash, extrovert and energetic side of the burgeoning partnership, Donen the more refined and relaxed. Three years later, the two men renewed their collaboration in Hollywood and did much to reinvigorate the musical genre. For the next decade, they worked side-by-side as choreographers and co-directors (a relationship Donen described as 'wonderful' but 'also trying at times'), linked to MGM's Arthur Freed unit. Between them, they directed classic musicals like On the Town (1949) and Singin' in the Rain (1952) and co-wrote the original story for Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949). Freed, by the way, was the producer almost single-handedly responsible for the high standard of MGM's A-grade musicals in the 40s and 50s. A former vaudevillian and song-plugger, Freed was an astute judge of talent and encouraged gifted individuals from other media (like radio or theatre) to become involved with pictures. Moreover, he gave artists like Kelly and Donen free rein to express their creative flair.
In 1949, MGM signed Donen to a seven-year contract as director in his own right. From then on, he and Kelly went their separate ways. After directing Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Donen moved on to Paramount for Funny Face (1957), then to Warner Brothers for The Pajama Game (1957) and Damn Yankees (1958). As musicals waned in popularity, Donen branched out into other genres. He began to direct and produce elegant, lavish romantic dramas like the delightful Indiscreet (1958), sophisticated comedies like The Grass Is Greener (1960) and Two for the Road (1967) (which starred Donen's favorite actress, Audrey Hepburn), as well as the top-shelf thrillers Charade (1963) (the best film Alfred Hitchcock never directed, again with Hepburn) and Arabesque (1966). Arguably, his most out-of-character film from this period was the esoteric mephistophelean (and very British) farce Bedazzled (1967), featuring the irrepressible comic talents of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
The 1970s heralded a steady decline in the quality of Donen's output. None of his later efforts seemed to have the panache of his earlier work: not the tepid adventure-comedy Lucky Lady (1975) (despite a good cast and sumptuous production look) nor the nostalgic musical fantasy The Little Prince (1974), based on the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A failure at the box office, the latter also marked the end of the Frederick Loewe-Alan Jay Lerner musical partnership. Donen's career may have finished on a low with a weak sojourn into science fiction that was Saturn 3 (1980) and the absolutely dreadful comedy Blame It on Rio (1984), but his reputation as one of the giants of the classic Hollywood musical is assured. Donen received an Honorary Oscar in 1998 ""for a body of work marked by grace, elegance, wit, and visual innovation.''- Director
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Richard Donner was born on 24 April 1930 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He was a director and producer, known for Superman (1978), Ladyhawke (1985) and Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (1980). He was married to Lauren Shuler Donner. He died on 5 July 2021 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
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- Camera and Electrical Department
Ernest Roscoe Dickerson A.S.C., aka. Ernest R. Dickerson, is an American film director and cinematographer. As a cinematographer, he is known for his frequent collaborations with Spike Lee. As a director, he is known for films such as Juice (1992), Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995), Bones (2001) and Never Die Alone (2004). He has also directed several episodes of acclaimed television series such as Once Upon a Time (2011), The Wire (2002), Dexter (2006), and The Walking Dead (2010).- Director
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- Producer
Allan Dwan was born on 3 April 1885 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was a director and writer, known for Bound in Morocco (1918), A Perfect Crime (1921) and Panthea (1917). He was married to Marie Shelton and Pauline Bush. He died on 28 December 1981 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Producer
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Luc Dardenne was born on 10 March 1954 in Awirs, Wallonia, Belgium. He is a producer and director, known for Two Days, One Night (2014), The Kid with a Bike (2011) and The Child (2005).- Director
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Thirty-one years ago, filmmaker Julie Dash broke racial and gender boundaries with her Sundance award-winning film (Best Cinematography) Daughters of the Dust. She became the first African American woman to have a wide theatrical release of her feature film. The Library of Congress placed Daughters of the Dust and her UCLA MFA senior thesis Illusions in the National Film Registry. These two films join a select group of American films preserved and protected as national treasures by the Librarian of Congress. Dash recently designed two rooms for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and VOGUE, In American: An Anthology of Fashion, featured at the NYC Met Gala 2022.- Director
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Jacques Demy was born on 5 June 1931 in Pontchâteau, Loire-Atlantique, France. He was a director and writer, known for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and A Room in Town (1982). He was married to Agnès Varda. He died on 27 October 1990 in Paris, France.- Director
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Jules Dassin was an Academy Award-nominated director, screenwriter and actor best known for his films Rififi (1955), Never on Sunday (1960), and Topkapi (1964).
He was born Julius Samuel Dassin on 18 December 1911, in Middletown, Connecticut, USA. He was one of eight children of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Samuel Dassin and Berthe Vogel. Young Dassin grew up in Harlem, and he attended Morris High School in the Bronx, graduating in 1929. After taking acting classes in Europe, he returned to New York. In 1934, he became and actor with the ARTEF Players (Arbeter Teater Farband), and was a member of the troupe until 1939. Dassin played character roles in Yiddish, mainly in the plays by Sholom Aleichem. But upon discovering "that an actor I was not," he switched to directing and writing. At that time, he joined the Communist Party of the United States, but left the party in 1939, he said, disillusioned after the Soviet Union signed a pact with Adolf Hitler.
Dassin came to Hollywood in 1940, and was an apprentice to directors Alfred Hitchcock and Garson Kanin. In 1941, he made his directorial debut at MGM with adaptation of a story by Edgar Allan Poe. Dassin's best directorial works for Hollywood include such criminal dramas as Brute Force (1947) starring Burt Lancaster; The Naked City (1948), one of the first police dramas shot on the streets of New York; and Night and the City (1950) starring Richard Widmark as a hustler in London who is caught up in his own schemes. While he was assigned by producer Darryl F. Zanuck to make the film, Dassin was accused of affiliation with the Communist Party in his past. Zanuck advised Dassin to "shoot the expensive scenes first, to hook the studio" so the film was finished and released in 1951. Dassin was reported to HUAC in a 1951 testimony by directors Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle. That was enough to sink his career in Hollywood. Dassin was subpoenaed by HUAC in 1952 and eventually became blacklisted after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
He left the United States for France in 1953 and struggled during his first years in Paris. He was not fluent in French, and his connections were limited. However, Dassin's low-budget film, Rififi (1955), famous for its long heist sequence that was free of dialog, won him the Best Director Award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. There, he met the Greek actress Melina Mercouri. Later, Dassin co-starred opposite Mercouri in his film Never on Sunday (1960), which won the Best Film Award at Cannes in 1960. At that time, the anti-Communist witch hunt in America was fading, and Dassin was accepted again. He received two Academy Award-nominations for directing and screen-writing for Topkapi (1964), starring Mercouri, Maximilian Schell, and Peter Ustinov. Dassin also served as member of jury at the Cannes and several other international film festivals.
Jules Dassin was married twice. He had three children with his first wife, violinist Beatrice Launer. His son, Joe Dassin, was a popular French singer in the 1960s and '70s, with such hits as "Bip Bip," "L'Eté Indien" and "Aux Champs-Èlysées." In 1966, Jules Dassin married Mercouri, an ardent anti-fascist who lost her Greek citizenship for opposing the junta, and the couple was living in Manhattan, remaining very active in their efforts to restore democracy in Greece during the dictatorship of the Colonels. After 1974, the couple returned to Greece, Mercouri became a member of the Greek Parliament, and Culture Minister of Greece. While living in Athens, Dassin was active in the effort to bring the 2500-year-old Elgin marbles of the Parthenon back to Athens from their current location at the British Museum in London. In this and other humanitarian causes, Dassin followed the last will of his late wife.
Jules Dassin died of complications caused by a flu, on April 1, 2008, at age 96, at Hygeia Hospital in Athens, Greece. He is survived by two daughters and grandchildren.- Actor
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Robert Downey Sr. served in the army, played minor-league baseball, was a Golden Gloves champion and off-off Broadway playwright, all before he was 22 years old.
Downey was born in New York City, New York, the son of Elizabeth (McLoughlin), a model, and Robert Elias, who worked in hotel/restaurant management. He took the surname of his stepfather, James Downey, when enlisting in the army. His father was of Lithuanian Jewish descent, while his mother was of half-Irish and half-Hungarian Jewish ancestry. In 1960, he began writing and directing basement-budgeted, absurdist films that gained an underground following: Balls Bluff (1961), Babo 73 (1964), Chafed Elbows (1966) and No More Excuses (1968). Putney Swope (1969) was the first Downey-directed film to earn a mainstream release. A devastating satire of Madison Avenue, it explored what happens when an African-American activist is given carte blanche at an advertising agency. The film was among the year's Top 10 Films in New York Magazine.
Downey thrived in the laissez-faire film world of the 1970s with such irreverent films as Pound (1970), where humans play dogs waiting to be adopted. Around this time he worked on projects for Joseph Papp and the New York Public Theatre, directing David Rabe's play "Sticks and Bones" for CBS (Sticks and Bones (1973)). The strong anti-war sentiments expressed in this live broadcast resulted in a major controversy when its sponsors pulled out at the last minute, and the network had to air the film uninterrupted because it couldn't find a sponsor. His Greaser's Palace (1972) is an outrageous restaging of the life of Christ in "spaghetti western" terms. Time Magazine put this film on its list of the year's Top 10 movies. Downey's take-no-prisoners sense of humor is also apparent in Two Tons of Turquoise to Taos Tonight (1975) and Hugo Pool (1997) (world premiere at the Sundance festival in 1997), a film that examines a day in the life of a female pool cleaner in Hollywood. Rittenhouse Square (2005) was the feature presentation of the Galway Film Festival and his second teaming with Max L. Raab, having been a consultant on Raab's award-winning Strut! (2001).
From time to time, Downey acted (badly, according to him) and he can be seen in films such as Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999) and The Family Man (2000). He appeared twice on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), The Dick Cavett Show (1968), IFC's At the IFC Center (1997), Sundance Channel and countless other TV and radio shows. In addition, Downey was a guest speaker at film festivals and universities throughout the country. He developed an update of "Putney Swope." He lived in New York City with his wife, Rosemary Rogers.
Robert was the father of actors Robert Downey Jr. and Allyson Downey.- Director
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Roger Donaldson was born on 15 November 1945 in Ballarat, Australia. He is a director and producer, known for The World's Fastest Indian (2005), No Way Out (1987) and Species (1995). He is married to Marliese Schneider. He was previously married to Susan Hockley.- Producer
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Carlos Diegues was born on 19 May 1940 in Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil. He is a producer and director, known for Xica (1976), O Maior Amor do Mundo (2006) and Better Days Ahead (1989). He has been married to Renata Maria de Almeida Magalhães since 1982. They have one child. He was previously married to Nara Leão.- Producer
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In 1989, Stephen Daldry worked as a freelance reader of unsolicited manuscripts for Literary Manager Nicholas Wright in the Scripts Department at the Royal National Theatre. In July of that year, he directed a Dadaist/expressionist production of "Judgement Day," a play by Odon von Horvath, at the Old Red Lion in London.- Director
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A former stage director, Basil Dearden entered films as an assistant to director Basil Dean (he changed his name from Dear to avoid being confused with Dean). Dearden worked his way up the ladder and directed (with Will Hay) his first film in 1941; two years later he directed his first film on his own. He eventually became associated with writer/producer Michael Relph, and together the two made films on themes not often tackled in British films, such as homosexuality and race relations. In the '60s Dearden embarked on a new phase of his career by directing large-scale action pictures, the best of which was Khartoum (1966), which was a critical and financial success. Not long after completing The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), Dearden was killed in an automobile accident.- Director
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Joe Dante is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art. After a stint as a film reviewer, he began his filmmaking apprenticeship in 1974 as trailer editor for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. He made his directorial debut in 1976 with Hollywood Boulevard (1976) (co-directed with Allan Arkush), a thinly disguised spoof of New World exploitation pictures, shot in ten days for $60,000.
In 1977 Dante made his solo debut as a film director with Piranha (1978), which went on to become one of the company's biggest hits and was distributed throughout the rest of the world by United Artists. During his tenure at New World, Dante edited Ron Howard's directorial debut Grand Theft Auto (1977) and co-wrote the original story for Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979).
For Avco-Embassy Dante next directed the highly praised werewolf thriller The Howling (1981), followed by the It's a Good Life segment of the episodic Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).
Having worked with Steven Spielberg on Twilight Zone, Dante was chosen to helm one of the first Amblin Productions for Warner Bros. Gremlins (1984) became a runaway hit and grossed more than $200 million worldwide.
Dante followed up with Explorers (1985) for Paramount, a sci-fi fantasy about three kids who build their own spaceship, and then Innerspace (1987) for Guber/Peters, Amblin and Warner Bros., an action comedy in which miniaturized test pilot Dennis Quaid is injected into the body of supermarket clerk Martin Short.
Tom Hanks starred in Dante's next film for Imagine/Universal, The 'Burbs (1989), which was followed by Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) for Warner Bros. in 1990. Matinee (1993) featuring John Goodman as a huckster showman premiering his new horror film during the Cuban Missile Crisis, was a production of Dante and partner Michael Finnell's Renfield Productions for Universal in 1993.
Dreamworks/Universal's Small Soldiers was released in 1998, followed in 2003 by Warner Bros. Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) featuring one of Dante's favorite actors, Bugs Bunny.
Dante's Homecoming (2005), debuted in December 2005 to rave reviews from critics and audiences alike and was named to numerous "Top 10" critics lists. The Sitges and Brussels International Film Festivals both honored Homecoming with Special Jury Recognition Awards, and the New Yorker called it the best political film of 2005. More recent work includes The Screwfly Solution (2006), and Boo (2007). His new 3D thriller, The Hole (2009), for Bold Films recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it garnered the first-ever award for Best 3D Feature.
Dante also produces the critically-acclaimed webisode/mobile phone series, Trailers from Hell.
Along the way Dante contributed several comedy segments to the multi-part Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) spoof produced by John Landis, and directed various episodes of the tv series Amazing Stories (1985), The Twilight Zone (1985), Police Squad! (1982), Night Visions (2001) and Picture Windows (1994). He also directed the network pilots for The Osiris Chronicles (1998) and the NBC series Eerie, Indiana (1991), on which he was creative consultant throughout its run.
Dante received Cable Ace nominations for his direction of Showtime's Runaway Daughters (1994) and HBO's The Second Civil War (1997).- Actor
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Danny DeVito has amassed a formidable and versatile body of work as an actor, producer and director that spans the stage, television and film.
Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. was born on November 17, 1944, in Neptune, New Jersey, to Italian-American parents. His mother, Julia (Moccello), was a homemaker. His father, Daniel, Sr., was a small business owner whose ventures included a dry cleaning shop, a dairy outlet, a diner, and a pool hall.
While growing up in Asbury Park, his parents sent him to private schools. He attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel grammar school and Oratory Prep School. Following graduation in 1962, he took a job as a cosmetician at his sister's beauty salon. A year later, he enrolled at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts so he could learn more about cosmetology. While at the academy, he fell in love with acting and decided to further pursue an acting career. During this time, he met another aspiring actor Michael Douglas at the National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Connecticut. The two would later go on to collaborate on numerous projects. Soon after he also met an actress named Rhea Perlman. The two fell in love and moved in together. They were married in 1982 and had three children together.
In 1968, Danny landed his first part in a movie when he appeared as a thug in the obscure Dreams of Glass (1970). Despite this minor triumph, Danny became discouraged with the film industry and decided to focus on stage productions. He made his Off-Broadway debut in 1969 in "The Man With the Flower in His Mouth." He followed this up with stage roles in "The Shrinking Bride," and "Lady Liberty." In 1975, he was approached by director Milos Forman and Michael Douglas about appearing in the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which would star Jack Nicholson in the leading role. With box office success almost guaranteed and a chance for national exposure, Danny agreed to the role. The movie became a huge hit, both critically and financially, and still ranks today as one the greatest movies of all time. Unfortunately, the movie did very little to help Danny's career. In the years following, he was relegated to small movie roles and guest appearances on television shows. His big break came in 1978 when he auditioned for a role on an ABC sitcom pilot called Taxi (1978), which centered around taxi cab drivers at a New York City garage. Danny auditioned for the role of dispatcher Louie DePalma. At the audition, the producers told Danny that he needed to show more attitude in order to get the part. He then slammed down the script and yelled, "Who wrote this sh**?" The producers, realizing he was perfect for the part, brought him on board. The show was a huge success, running from 1978 to 1983.
Louie DePalma, played flawlessly by Danny, became one of the most memorable (and reviled) characters in television history. While he was universally hated by TV viewers, he was well-praised by critics, winning an Emmy award and being nominated three other times. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Danny maintained his status as a great character actor with memorable roles in movies like Romancing the Stone (1984), Ruthless People (1986), Throw Momma from the Train (1987) and Twins (1988). He also had a great deal of success behind the camera, directing movies like The War of the Roses (1989) and Hoffa (1992). In 1992, Danny was introduced to a new generation of moviegoers when he was given the role of The Penguin/Oswald Cobblepot in Tim Burton's highly successful Batman Returns (1992). This earned him a nomination for Best Villain at the MTV Movie Awards. That same year, along with his wife Rhea Perlman, Danny co-founded Jersey Films, which has produced many popular films and TV shows, including Pulp Fiction (1994), Get Shorty (1995), Man on the Moon (1999) and Erin Brockovich (2000). DeVito has many directing credits to his name as well, including Throw Momma from the Train (1987), The War of the Roses (1989), Hoffa (1992), Death to Smoochy (2002) and the upcoming St. Sebastian.
In 2006, he returned to series television in the FX comedy series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005). With a prominent role in a hit series, Devito's comic talents were now on display for a new generation of television viewers. In 2012, he provided the title voice role in Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (2012).
These days, he continues to work with many of today's top talents as an actor, director and producer.- Writer
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Three-time Oscar nominee Frank Darabont was born in a refugee camp in 1959 in Montbeliard, France, the son of Hungarian parents who had fled Budapest during the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution. Brought to America as an infant, he settled with his family in Los Angeles and attended Hollywood High School. His first job in movies was as a production assistant on the 1981 low-budget film, Hell Night (1981), starring Linda Blair. He spent the next six years working in the art department as a set dresser and in set construction while struggling to establish himself as a writer. His first produced writing credit (shared) was on the 1987 film, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), directed by Chuck Russell. Darabont is one of only six filmmakers in history with the unique distinction of having his first two feature films receive nominations for the Best Picture Academy Award: 1994's The Shawshank Redemption (1994) (with a total of seven nominations) and 1999's The Green Mile (1999) (four nominations). Darabont himself collected Oscar nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for each film (both based on works by Stephen King), as well as nominations for both films from the Director's Guild of America, and a nomination from the Writers Guild of America for The Shawshank Redemption (1994). He won the Humanitas Prize, the PEN Center USA West Award, and the Scriptor Award for his screenplay of "The Shawshank Redemption". For "The Green Mile", he won the Broadcast Film Critics prize for his screenplay adaptation, and two People's Choice Awards in the Best Dramatic Film and Best Picture categories. The Majestic (2001), starring Jim Carrey, was released in December 2001. He executive-produced the thriller, Collateral (2004), for DreamWorks, with Michael Mann directing and Tom Cruise starring. Future produced-by projects include "Way of the Rat" at DreamWorks with Chuck Russell adapting and directing the CrossGen comic book series and "Back Roads", a Tawni O'Dell novel, also at DreamWorks, with Todd Field attached to direct. Darabont and his production company, "Darkwoods Productions", have an overall deal with Paramount Pictures.- Writer
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Although Delmer Daves obtained a law degree at Stanford University, he never had the opportunity to use it; while still in college, he obtained a job as a prop boy on The Covered Wagon (1923) and after graduation was hired by several film companies as a technical advisor on films with a college background. Soon afterward he entered films as an actor, and after appearing in several pictures he began collaborating on screenplays and original stories. He wrote scripts for many of Hollywood's best films of the 1930s and 1940s, including The Petrified Forest (1936), Love Affair (1939) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942). Turning director with the classic Destination Tokyo (1943), Daves often wrote and produced his own pictures. Of the many films he made, the westerns he did were especially close to his heart--as a youth he had spent much time living on reservations with Hopi and Navajo Indians.- Director
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Director/Producer/Writer) Andrew Davis is a filmmaker with a reputation for directing intelligent thrillers, most notably the Academy Award-nominated box-office hit The Fugitive (1993), starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. The film received seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and earned Jones a Best Supporting Actor award. Davis garnered a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director and a Directors Guild of America nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Direction. In reviewing "The Fugitive", film critic Roger Ebert commended Davis, noting that he "transcends genre and shows an ability to marry action and artistry that deserves comparison with [Alfred Hitchcock], David Lean and Carol Reed. He paints with bold, visual strokes."
Davis is the son of parents who met in a repertory theater company in Chicago, where he was raised. His late father, Nathan Davis, worked on several of his films, including his role as Shia LaBeouf's grandfather in Holes (2011). Andy received his degree in journalism from the University of Illinois and began his work in motion pictures as an assistant cameraman to renowned cinematographer and director Haskell Wexler on the 1969 classic Medium Cool (1969). Wexler's ultra-realistic approach was to have a great influence on Davis, who then became a director of photography on numerous award-winning television commercials and documentaries, including 15 studio and independent features. In 1976, joined by many of his fellow cinematographers, Davis challenged the IATSE union's restrictive studio roster system in a landmark class-action suit that forced the industry to open its doors to young technicians in all crafts.
Davis made his directorial debut in 1978 with the critically acclaimed independent musical Stony Island (1978), which he also co-wrote and produced. The thriller The Final Terror (1983) was Davis' sophomore project, for producer Joe Roth, which starred then- newcomers Darryl Hanah, Joe Pantoliano, Rachel Ward and Adrian Zmed. Davis then co-wrote the screenplay for Harry Belafonte's rap musical Beat Street (1984) before moving into the director's chair full-time for Mike Medavoy and Orion Pictures on the Chuck Norris classic Code of Silence (1985). Davis directed, co-produced and co-wrote Steven Seagal's feature film debut, Above the Law (1988), for Warner Brothers. The Package (1989), (Orion) followed, directed by Davis and starring Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones. Davis went on to direct 1992's top grossing picture, Under Siege (1992), for Warner Brothers, a classic action film teaming Steven Seagal with Tommy Lee Jones.
Davis' other directorial credits include (for Warner Bros.) Collateral Damage (2002), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger; A Perfect Murder (1998), starring Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortensen; Chain Reaction (1996), starring Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman and Rachel Weisz; and Steal Big Steal Little (1995), starring Andy Garcia and Alan Arkin.
Davis next directed and produced "Holes", the feature film adaptation of Louis Sachar's beloved Newberry Medal and National Book Award-winning children's novel. Starring Shia Labeouf, Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight and Patricia Arquette and released by the Walt Disney Company, "Holes" was named one of the 100 Best Family Films. It has been praised by audiences of all ages, furthering Davis' reputation as a director with a wide range. A.O. Scott's review in "The New York Times" called it "the best film released by an American studio so far this year".
In 2000, Davis completed the Disney/Touchstone feature film The Guardian (2006), which honors the true heroes of the ocean, the Rescue Swimmers of the U.S. Coast Guard. Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher portray heroic swimmers committed to the personal and physical sacrifices necessary to save the lives of those stranded helplessly in the sea. In an unforgettable instance of life imitating art, the film's New Orleans production was halted due to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. The staff of U.S. Coast Guard advisors to the production left to help rescue 35,000 people in the wake of one of the worst natural disasters in American history.
Presently, Davis is developing several projects through his Santa Barbara based production company, Chicago Pacific Entertainment, including: Silvers Gold - A Return to Treasure Island, a modern retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, adapting the Gene Wilder novella My French Whore, Mentors - a series for worldwide television with a pilot episode examining the lives of two legendary photographers. Davis recently completed his first novel, alongside writer Jeff Biggers, Disturbing the Bones, a geopolitical thriller involving the world threatening discovery of rouge weapons found in Southern Illinois by a Chicago detective and a young female archaeologist set for release in summer 2024 by Melville House Publishing. 2023 saw both the 20th anniversary of Holes and the 30th anniversary of a newly remastered version of The Fugitive (1993) overseen by Davis at Warner Bros slated for a limited rerelease in theaters in spring 2024 with a global release on 4K UHD disc in November 2023. In November 2023, Davis' first film, Stony Island (1978) celebrates its 45th anniversary with a theatrical screening at the Gene Siskel Center in Chicago before its North American digital debut on major VOD platforms and DVD.- Producer
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Jay Duplass, along with his brother, Mark Duplass, first made a name for himself writing and directing several award-winning short films. His first feature film was the Sundance 2005 breakout hit "The Puffy Chair," which went on to win the Audience Award at SXSW and receive two Independent Spirit Award nominations. The film was released theatrically by Roadside Attractions and Netflix in 2006. "Baghead," the brothers' second feature film, was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics at Sundance 2008 for theatrical and DVD release. Fox Searchlight recently released the Duplass Brothers' first studio feature, "Cyrus," starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill and Marisa Tomei, which has garnered rave reviews. Their latest project "Jeff, Who Lives at Home," stars Jason Segal, Ed Helms, and Susan Sarandon. Jay is also a father, husband, runner and documentarian.and Mark- Writer
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Aleksandr Dovzhenko was born on 10 September 1894 in Vyunishche, Sosnitsa Ueyzd, Chernigov Governorate, Russian Empire [now Sosnitsa, Sosnitsa Raion, Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine]. He was a writer and director, known for Earth (1930), Shors (1939) and Life in Bloom (1949). He was married to Yuliya Solntseva. He died on 25 November 1956 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia].- Producer
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Pete Docter is the Oscar®-winning director of "Monsters, Inc.," "Up," and "Inside Out," and Chief Creative Officer at Pixar Animation Studios. He is currently directing Pixar's feature film "Soul" with producer Dana Murray, which is set to release June 19, 2020.
Starting at Pixar in 1990 as the studio's third animator, Docter collaborated and help develop the story and characters for "Toy Story," Pixar's first full-length animated feature film, for which he also was supervising animator. He served as a storyboard artist on "A Bug's Life," and wrote initial story treatments for both "Toy Story 2" and "WALL.E." Aside from directing his three films, Docter also executive produced "Monsters University" and the Academy Award®-winning "Brave."
Docter's interest in animation began at the age of eight when he created his first flipbook. He studied character animation at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California, where he produced a variety of short films, one of which won a Student Academy Award®. Those films have since been shown in animation festivals worldwide and are featured on the "Pixar Short Films Collection Volume 2." Upon joining Pixar, he animated and directed several commercials, and has been nominated for eight Academy Awards® including Best Animated Feature-winners "Up" and "Inside Out" and nominee "Monsters, Inc.," and Best Original Screenplay for "Up," "Inside Out" and "WALL.E." In 2007, "Up" also was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.- Writer
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A director, producer, writer, marketer and film distributor, Ava DuVernay made her feature film debut with the documentary This is the Life (2008), a history on hip hop movement that flourished in Los Angeles in the 1990's. This was followed by series of television music documentaries which included My Mic Sounds Nice (2010) which aired on BET.
DuVernay's first narrative feature film, I Will Follow (2010), secured her the African-American Film Critics Association award for best screenplay. Her follow-up, Middle of Nowhere (2012) won the Best Director Prize at the 2012 Sundance film festival, making her the first African-American woman to receive the award.- Director
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One of the great names of Belgian cinema, Oscar nominated director Dominique Deruddere has been passionate about filmmaking since he was a child. Thanks to his older brother, who lent him his movie camera, young Dominique managed to make his own films, starting in super 8 at the age of fourteen ("Orange Licht"), proceeding to 16mm ("Bedankt Ma") before accessing to 35 mm ("Wodka Orange"). After these shorts - made before, during and after his film school years, Deruddere collaborated with his childhood friend Marc Didden, co-writing the script of "Brussels by Night" (1983) and playing a significant part in "Istanbul" (1985). In 1986, the young director made the right pick when he decided to film a story by Charles Bukowski. Indeed what was intended as a thirty minute short was, thanks to a far-seeing producer, expanded into a feature film. "Crazy Love" (better known as "Love is a Dog from Hell") was indeed released worldwide, became a festival favorite and was unanimously acclaimed as an achievement. The film also drew the attention of Francis Ford Coppola who, through his Zoetrope production company, helped Deruddere to set up his next project, an adaptation of John Fante's "Bandini", filmed in the USA in 1989, also distributed all over the world. Dominique Deruddere came back to the States in 2001 to defend his film "Everybody Famous", which had been nominated for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award. Among Deruddere's other films are :"Suite 16" (1994), "Hombres Complicados" (1997), "Pour le plaisir" (2004) , The Wedding Party (2005), Firmin (2007), Flying Home (aka Racing Hearts, 2014)...- Writer
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Ms. Duras was born in southern Vietnam and lost her father at age 4. The family savings of 20 years bought the family a small plot in Cambodia, but everything was lost in a single season's flooding. The disaster killed her mother as a result. After high school in Saigon, Ms. Duras left Indochina to study law in Paris. As a young woman, she worked as a secretary in France's Ministry of Colonies from 1935 to 1941, before becoming a writer. She wrote 34 novels from 1943 to 1993, and became an enduring part of Paris's intellectual elite. In addition to her writing, she also directed about 16 films. For the film India Song (1975), she won France's Cinema Academy Grand Prix. She claimed to have rescued French president François Mitterand during World War II, when he was a resistance fighter and remained a friend and unconditional campaigner. Her most noted novel is "L'Amant", the story of a girl, from a poor French family in Indochina, who becomes the mistress of a wealthy Indochinese notable's son.- Producer
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Robert Drew was born on 15 February 1924 in Toledo, Ohio, USA. He was a producer and director, known for Storm Signal (1966), The Bell Telephone Hour (1959) and The Chair (1963). He was married to Anne Gilbert and First Wife. He died on 30 July 2014 in Sharon, Connecticut, USA.- Director
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Edward Dmytryk grew up in San Francisco, the son of Ukrainian immigrants. After his mother died when he was 6, his strict disciplinarian father beat the boy frequently, and the child began running away while in his early teens. Eventually, juvenile authorities allowed him to live alone at the age of 15 and helped him find part-time work as a film studio messenger. Dmytryk was an outstanding student in physics and mathematics and gained a scholarship to the California Institute of Technology. However, he dropped out after one year to return to movies, eventually working his way up from film editor to director. By the late 1940s, he was considered one of Hollywood's rising young directing talents, but his career was interrupted by the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a congressional committee that employed ruthless tactics aimed at rooting out and destroying what it saw as Communist influence in Hollywood. A lifelong political leftist who had been a Communist Party member briefly during World War II, Dmytryk was one of the so-called "Hollywood Ten" who refused to cooperate with HUAC and had their careers disrupted or ruined as a result. The committee threw him in prison for refusing to cooperate, and after having spent several months behind bars, Dmytryk decided to cooperate after all, and testified again before the committee, this time giving the names of people he said were Communists. He claimed to believe he had done the right thing, but many in the Hollywood community--even those who came along long after the committee was finally disbanded--never forgave him, and that action overshadowed his career the rest of his life. In the 1970s, as his directing career ground to a halt, Dmytryk recalled some advice once given him by Garson Kanin, and returned to academic life, this time as a teacher. From 1976 to 1981 he was a professor of film theory and production at the University of Texas at Austin, and in 1981, was appointed to a chair in filmmaking at the University of Southern California, a position he held until about two years before his death. During his teaching career, he also authored several books on various aspects of filmmaking, as well as two volumes of memoirs.- Producer
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Lee Daniels gave his parents an early Christmas present when he entered the world on December 24, 1959; unfortunately, the Philadelphia native was to have a difficult relationship with his police officer father who later reacted violently to his son's sexuality. Despite the brutality of his childhood, Lee completed high school and attended Lindenwood University in St.Charles, Missouri for two years.
Daniels's career took an interesting and profitable turn. He moved to Los Angeles and started a nursing agency of his own. He later sold the agency for a substantial sum then began his career in entertainment, first as a casting director and later as a manager. By his mid-twenties, he was working with Prince on Purple Rain (1984) and Under the Cherry Moon (1986). Despite being involved in film production, Lee continued to manage talent and grew a roster of clients that included several Academy Award nominees and winners.
He created his own production company, Lee Daniels Entertainment, and its first film was the acclaimed Monster's Ball (2001), which starred Billy Bob Thornton, the late Heath Ledger and Halle Berry, who went on to win the Best Actress Oscar. Monster's Ball was a critical and financial success and as its producer, Daniels became a force to be reckoned with.
In 2004, Lee used skills honed as a filmmaker to produce a series of public service announcements aimed at inspiring young people of color to vote. He worked with former President, Bill Clinton and was able to enlist actor/rap artist LL Cool J and actor/singer Alicia Keys. Lee's next production, The Woodsman (2004), was another edgy tale about a pedophile trying to reform after being released from prison and starred Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick and Yasiin Bey. While The Woodsman (2004) was not the critical success that Monster's Ball (2001) was, it attracted a great deal of critical attention and earned its star, Kevin Bacon, raves for his performance.
Daniels made his directorial debut with his next project, Shadowboxer (2005), a provocative drama with an intriguing cast that included Helen Mirren, Cuba Gooding Jr., Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Stephen Dorff. Shadowboxer (2005) was also the first time Lee worked with Mo'Nique; unfortunately, despite an interesting cast, Shadowboxer (2005) received mixed reviews and failed at the box office. Lee's next production, Tennessee (2008) was not a critical or financial success but allowed Lee to help singer 'Mariah Carey' gain acting credentials after the failure of her first film, Glitter (2001).
Daniels hit the mother lode with his next effort, Precious (2009), which he directed and produced. The film won at the Sundance Film Festival and has garnered every imaginable accolade under the sun. The film stars newcomer Gabourey Sidibe in the title role as a Harlem teen who is the victim of unimaginable abuse from her father, mother and society. The film allowed Daniels to re-team with both Mariah Carey and Mo'Nique, who has been a revelation to both critics and audiences as Precious's abusive mother. Daniels has said that he felt compelled to bring this story of child abuse to the screen to help heal the scars from his relationship with his abusive father.- Director
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The films of Claire Denis frequently explore the fragile connections between people and the ways in which the most seemingly inconsequential relationship can have life-changing effects. At the heart of Denis' cinema is a fascination with the delights and difficulties of belonging and otherness, the gravity and gift of foreignness. Often revolving around reactions to the intrusion of the other, be it a stranger or foreigner, Denis' films insist on the vital necessity of the unusual to coexist within the "normal" world. In films such as I Can't Sleep (1994) and Nénette and Boni (1996), Denis captures the mercurial and instant shifts in tone, from the pleasurably sensual to the menacing or the simply unaccountable, caused by the intrusion of the strange into the fabric of the everyday. In Denis' films one often feels that all is well even as worlds collide and collapse or, conversely, that a grave challenge underlies the seemingly calm moments. While Denis' childhood in French colonial Africa is reflected most directly in the African setting shared by her debut feature Chocolat (1988) and best-known film, Beau Travail (1999), this encounter with the intimacies and injustices of colonialism resounds throughout much of her work. Also shaping Denis' unique vision are the apprenticeships she served, just out of film school, under a variety of renowned directors, including Jacques Rivette, Wim Wenders, Dusan Makavejev and Jim Jarmusch - an eclectic company that is itself suggestive of the unique juxtaposition of careful craft and seeming casualness within Denis' work. Denis has often spoken of her shock as a young woman at discovering the novels of Faulkner that have exerted such a major influence over postwar French cinema. For Denis, Faulkner "was a plunge into the senses, into terror and the pain of his characters." These words describe Denis' films as well. But whatever terror and pain her characters may sometimes experience is outmeasured by the depths of Denis' deep affection for them and by her curiosity in their experiences of pleasure as well as fear. Even in the unsettling Trouble Every Day (2001), the not-infrequent catastrophes in Denis' films provoke a sense of wonder at, and even delight in, the sheer weight of existence.- Director
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Maya Deren came to the USA in 1922 as Eleanora Derenkowsky. Together with her father Solomon Derenkowsky, a psychiatrist, and her mother Maria Fidler, an artist, she fled the pogroms organized by the Bolsheviks against the Jews. She studied journalism and political science at the Syracuse University in New York, finishing her BA at the New York University (NYU) in June 1936, and then received her MA in English literature from the Smith College in 1939.
In 1943, she made her first film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), co-starring with Alexander Hammid. Through this association, at Hammid's suggestion, she changed her name to Maya, meaning "illusion." Overall, she made six short films and several incomplete films, including Witch's Cradle (1944) starring Marcel Duchamp.
Deren is the author of two books, "An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film" 1946 (reprinted in "The Legend of Maya Deren," vol 1, part 2) and "Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti" (1953)--a book that was made after her first trip to Haiti in 1947 and which is still considered one of the most useful on Haitian Voudoun. Deren wrote numerous articles on film and on Haiti. Maya Deren shot over 18,000 feet of film in Haiti from 1947 to 1954 on Haitian Voudoun, parts of which can be viewed in Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1993) made after her death by her then-husband Teiji Ito and his new wife Cherel Ito.
In 1947, Maya Deren became the first filmmaker to receive a Guggenheim grant for creative work in motion pictures. She wrote film theory, distributed her own films, traveled across the USA, and went to Cuba and Canada to promote her films using the lecture-demonstration format to teach film theory, and Voudoun and the interrelationship of magic, science, and religion. Deren established the Creative Film Foundation in the late 1950s to reward the achievements of independent filmmakers.- Director
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After having studied German philology, law, piano and composition Andre Delvaux filmed some TV documentaries. In 1965 he debuted in the movies with a film adapted from a novel of Johan Daisne. His films always played in a set between reality and fantasy. Writing his own scripts he filmed e.g. Een vrouw tussen hond en wolf (1979) and Benvenuta (1983) but he had had then problems in financing his projects. Nevertheless he went on with e.g. L'oeuvre au noir (1988) but the interest of the masses was only small.- Actor
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Duke Media Entertainment, led by actor, director, producer, writer and humanitarian, Bill Duke, is dedicated to bringing quality Edutainment to audiences around the globe. Formerly Yagya Productions, Duke Media has successfully produced critically acclaimed film and television content for more than 30 years. Additionally, Duke Media is in process of expanding the brand to involve itself in the development of new media technologies, i.e. cellphone apps, games, and virtual world experiences. Since the early 70s, Bill Duke along with industry veterans Michael Shultz and Gordon Parks, have long paved the way for African Americans in the industry.
Mr. Duke excels in front of and behind the camera. His acting and directing credits are extensive and include stints on such ground breaking television series as Falcon Crest, Fame, Hill Street Blues, Knotts Landing, Dallas, and New York Undercover. His feature credits include Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Get Rich or Die Trying, Deep Cover, Hoodlum, Predator, Menace II Society and Not Easily Broken, to name a few. He has recently completed production on, Blexicans, a new television pilot that takes a comedic look at a mixed race family. His documentaries, Dark Girls and Light Girls, both NAACP Image Award nominees, aired on OWN and were two of the most successful documentaries on the network.
Bill Duke's invaluable contributions to the industry have been recognized by both his peers and the entertainment community. Appointed by former President Bill Clinton to the National Endowment of Humanities, he was appointed to the Board of the California State Film Commission by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and he has been honored by the Directors Guild of America with a Lifetime Achievement Tribute.- Director
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Zeinabu irene Davis was born on 13 April 1961 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She is a director and producer, known for Compensation (1999), Spirits of Rebellion: Black Cinema at UCLA (2016) and A Powerful Thang (1991). She has been married to Marc Arthur Chéry since 24 August 1996. They have two children.- Director
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Roy Del Ruth was born on Oct. 18, 1895, in Philadelphia, PA. He began his Hollywood career as a writer for Mack Sennett in 1915. He began directing in 1919 for Sennett with the two-reeler Hungry Lions and Tender Hearts (1920). In the early 1920s he moved over to features with such efforts as Asleep at the Switch (1923), The Hollywood Kid (1924), Eve's Lover (1925) and The Little Irish Girl (1926)_. Following several more titles, many of which were later lost in a film vault fire, he directed The First Auto (1927), a charming look at the introduction of the first automobile to a small rural town. The film featured several elaborate sound effects for the time and was considered lost until it was restored years later. Del Ruth went on to direct a number of films before having the distinction of directing the musical The Desert Song (1929), the first color film ever released by Warner Bros. That same year he directed Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), Warner's second two-strip Technicolor, all-talking feature that also became a big box-office hit for the director. Having successfully segued into the talkie era, Del Ruth directed two more two-strip color musicals, Hold Everything (1930) and The Life of the Party (1930), before directing James Cagney and Joan Blondell in the cheerfully amoral gangster film Blonde Crazy (1931). That same year he directed the first of three adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's famed novel, The Maltese Falcon (1931). In that one Ricardo Cortez portrayed the roguish private eye Sam Spade, whose investigation of a murder case entwines him in a plot involving a number of unsavory types searching for a fabled, jewel-encrusted falcon. While the plot basically mirrors the 1941 remake (The Maltese Falcon (1941), this pre-Code version featured several instances of sexual innuendo, including Bebe Daniels bathing in the nude, overt references to homosexuality and even one instance of cursing.
Del Ruth reunited with James Cagney for the crime drama Taxi (1931) and helmed the well-regarded show-biz comedy Blessed Event (1932). He went on to pilot a number of above average-pictures such as The Little Giant (1933) starring Edward G. Robinson, Lady Killer (1933) with Cagney again, Bureau of Missing Persons (1933) featuring Bette Davis, Upperworld (1934) with Ginger Rogers and the musical comedy Kid Millions (1934) starring Eddie Cantor. He next directed Ronald Colman in his second and final appearance as Bulldog Drummond in the detective mystery Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934) and steered the backstage showbiz musical Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), starring Jack Benny and Eleanor Powell
After returning to the realm of crime for It Had to Happen (1936) with George Raft and Rosalind Russell, Del Ruth directed James Stewart in one of the actor's few musicals, Born to Dance (1936). He followed up with Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937) before guiding ice skating star Sonja Henie through My Lucky Star (1938) and Happy Landing (1938).
Del Ruth continued churning out product for the studios, helming competent films like The Star Maker (1939), Here I Am a Stranger (1939), He Married His Wife (1940) and Topper Returns (1941). After working solo on The Chocolate Soldier (1941), Maisie Gets Her Man (1942), Du Barry Was a Lady (1943) and Broadway Rhythm (1944). It may be interesting to note that Del Ruth was the second highest paid director in Hollywood from the period 1932-41, according to Box Office and Exhibitor magazine.
Del Ruth was one of seven directors on the successful Ziegfeld Follies (1945), which featured an all-star cast of Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Fanny Brice, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Lena Horne, Red Skelton and William Powell. From there he helmed the cheerfully ambitious Christmas-themed It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), an appealing entertainment that was compared to It's a Wonderful Life (1946), but did not have that film's generational resonance. Still, the musical comedy starring Don DeFore and Ann Harding was still a touching film that managed to delight. Del Ruth next directed The Babe Ruth Story (1948), with William Bendix badly miscast as baseball legend Babe Ruth. Bending historical truths lest he offend Ruth's legacy, Del Ruth's biopic was rushed through production amidst news of the ailing Ruth's declining health. Even Del Ruth remained unsatisfied with the results.
He directed George Raft again in the film-noir crime drama Red Light (1949), Milton Berle and Virginia Mayo in the comedy Always Leave Them Laughing (1949) and James Cagney in the vibrant The West Point Story (1950). Following a pair of mediocre Doris Day musicals, Starlift (1951) and On Moonlight Bay (1951), Del Ruth's career began to slow to basically one project a year, with Stop, You're Killing Me (1952) and the James Cagney military musical About Face (1952). He went on to direct Jane Powell and Gordon MacRae in Three Sailors and a Girl (1953), then took a short excursion into the new 3D process with the horror film Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954) with Karl Malden.
Away from the director's chair for the next five years, Del Ruth returned to helm the low-budget horror picture The Alligator People (1959), a bizarre tale about humans being partially transformed into alligators in the Deep South, a picture that would seem more suited to Roger Corman than Del Ruth. His ended his career with the misfire Why Must I Die? (1960), apparently made to cash in on the success of the better known Susan Hayward film I Want to Live! (1958).
Roy Del Ruth died a year later on April 27, 1961, at 67 years old from a heart attack.- Director
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John Dahl was born on 15 June 1956 in Billings, Montana, USA. He is a director and writer, known for The Last Seduction (1994), Kill Me Again (1989) and Rounders (1998). He is married to Beth Jana Friedberg. They have four children.- Writer
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Revered by such legendary fellow directors as Ingmar Bergman and Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier is one of the most legendary figures in the history of French cinema. He is perhaps the most neglected of the "Big Five" of classic French cinema (the other four being Jean Renoir, Rene Clair, Jacques Feyder, and Marcel Carne), partly due to the uneven quality of his work. But despite his misfires, the cream of his oeuvre is simply stellar and deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as filmdom's most breathtaking masterpieces. Initially working as a stage actor, Duvivier began his movie career in 1918 as an assistant to such seminal French helmsmen as Louis Feuillade and Marcel L'Herbier. A year later, he directed his first film, "Haceldama ou le prix du sang" (1919), which was not successful and evinced nothing of the lyricism and beauty that would define the director's later work. He continued directing, however, eventually earning a job with Film D'Art, a production company founded by producers Marcel Vandal and Charles Delac. It was here, at Film D'Art, that Duvivier was to really find his way at an artist. In the 1930s, Duvivier's talents came into full bloom, beginning with "David Golder" in 1930. Duvivier's subsequent efforts in this decade, aided by the advent of sound in motion pictures, would establish Duvivier as one of the leading forces in world cinema. It was also in the 1930s that Duvivier began working with Jean Gabin, an actor who would appear in many of Duvivier's most career-defining films, most notably "Pepe le Moko" (1937). "Pepe" was the cracklingly entertaining story of a sly gangster and master thief (Gabin) who lives in the casbah section of Algiers. A prince of the underworld, Pepe's criminal mastery is shaken when his arch nemesis Inspector Slimane, exploits a young Parisian beauty as a ploy to capture this most elusive the casbah's crooks. The latter film made Jean Gabin an international star and also attained enough popularity and critical acclaim to earn Duvivier an invitation from MGM to direct a biopic of great director Johann Strauss, entitled "The Great Waltz" (1938). Duvivier found Hollywood agreeable and would later return there during WWII. His wartime output was of varied quality, one of the most meritorious being "Tales of Manhattan" (1942). Duvivier returned to France after the war, where he found his reputation and standing to be badly damaged by his absence during the war years. He continued to work in France for the remainder of his life, however, eventually regaining success with such films as the Fernandel vehicle "Le Petit monde de Don camilo" (1951) which as awarded a prize at the Venice Film Festival. Duvivier had just completed production on his final project, "Diaboliquement vôtre" (1967), when he was killed in an auto accident at the age of 71. Though his life and career ended with this tragic accident, his legacy lives on through his films and in the minds and hearts of many.- Producer
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Jörn Donner grew up in a Swedish-speaking family belonging to the Finnish upper class. Already as a student he had radical leftist ideas displayed in magazines and newspapers. His first novel appeared in 1951 when Donner was only 18 years old. He graduated from the University of Helsinki in 1959. In 1961 Donner moved to Sweden when the daily newspaper "Dagens Nyheter" hired him as a film critic. He returned to his home country in 1967. During his stay in Sweden he also directed his first feature film, "A Sunday in September". He temporarily returned to Sweden in the 1970s to head the Swedish Film Institute. Again, Donner returned to his home country after a while.
Donner is best known for his work as an author. He has written several novels. He was awarded the Finlandia Prize in Literature in 1985 for "Father and Son". During the years he has also written many columns for large news papers in Finland.
After his directorial debut in 1963 Donner continued to work in film, mainly as a producer. He formed his own production company Jörn Donner Productions in 1960. He produced Ingmar Bergman's critically acclaimed "Fanny and Alexander" in 1982 and is thereby the first Finn ever to receive an Academy Award.
Ever since his early years as a student and struggling writer Donner has had an interest in politics. He has been a Member of Parliament in Finland and also an European MP. After successfully supporting Social Democrat Ahtisaari's presidential campaign in 1994 he was appointed Finnish consul to Los Angeles. Donner soon returned back to Finland. In 2003 Donner failed to return to politics when he did not get elected in the Finnish parliamentary election.
After a few years in the small town of Ekenäs, Finland Donner has returned to live in the nation's capital where he works as an independent writer, columinst and film producer.- Writer
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Duigan emigrated to Australia in 1961, having been born to an Australian father. He is related to many Australian performers, being the husband of Nammi Le, brother of novelist Virginia Duigan (wife of director Bruce Beresford) and uncle of Trilby Beresford.
Duigan studied at Melbourne University, graduating in 1973 with a Masters degree in Philosophy. While at university, he worked extensively as an actor and director in theatre, and acted in a number of short films.
He began directing films in 1974, with early successes including Mouth to Mouth, winner of the Jury Prize at the Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards, Winter of our Dreams, for which he won an Australian Writers' Guild award for Best Screenplay, and the multi-award winning mini-series Vietnam. His 1981 film Winter of Our Dreams was entered into the 13th Moscow International Film Festival.
Subsequent films included The Year My Voice Broke, for which he won AFIs for Best Director and Best Screenplay, and Flirting, both of which won Best Picture at the AFI Awards. Subsequently, Duigan worked in the United States and Europe, returning to Australia to make Sirens (1993), winner of Best Film at the St. Petersburg Film Festival.
In the United States he directed Romero, starring Raul Julia, which won the Humanitas Award, and Lawn Dogs, winner of numerous prizes in European festivals. In England he directed The Leading Man, from a screenplay by his sister Virginia, The Parole Officer with Steve Coogan, and in Canada/France/UK Head in the Clouds with Charlize Theron and Penélope Cruz, winner in Canada of four Genie Awards and Best Film at the Milan International Film Festival.
Between 2005 and 2010 he took time off from the film industry to work on a book on secular ethics, returning to Australia to direct Careless Love in 2011/12.- Director
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Gerardo de Leon was born on 12 September 1913 in Manila, Philippines. He was a director and actor, known for Noli me tángere (1961), El filibusterismo (1962) and Huwag Mo Akong Limutin (1960). He died on 25 July 1981 in Manila, Philippines.- Director
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Starting out as a child actor, Gordon Douglas was eventually hired by Hal Roach as a gag writer. His first directorial assignments were for Roach's "Our Gang" series. Graduating to features, Douglas stayed with comedies, directing Oliver Hardy in Zenobia (1939) and both Hardy and Stan Laurel in Saps at Sea (1940). Douglas left Roach for RKO, for which he directed about a dozen films from 1942-47, mostly routine programmers. He then went to Columbia for several years, but in 1950 he headed over to Warner Brothers, where he would stay for the next 15 years and where he would find his greatest successes. His westerns and crime dramas for Warners met with critical and financial success, and it was during this period that he made what is considered one of the classic sci-fi films of the era: Them! (1954). Although he had his share of clunkers, and has at times expressed dissatisfaction with his career (he once said, "Don't try to watch all the films I've directed; it would turn you off movies forever"), he was responsible for some of the more enjoyable films of the 1950s and 1960s. One of his most successful films was also one of Frank Sinatra's best--The Detective (1968), a tough, gritty and controversial (for the time) crime drama about a homicide cop who gets involved in a murder case involving wealthy and powerful homosexual men.- Writer
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Born in 1963. in Belgrade. Degree in Clinical Psychology and in Film Directing. Author of the 8 feature films and 8 books for grown-up's and the kids. Professor at Film Academy in Belgrade 2000-2004. MP at Serbian Parliament, 2012-2015. Director of 200 commercials, for "the bread and butter" purposes. His books for kids "Poopwille", "Poopking" and "Winged childhood" are among the bestsellers for the kids in Ex-Yu region. His film "Pretty Village, Pretty Flame is among 1000 best films of all time in Halliwell's film encyclopedia and among 30 best war films in history, according to Sight&Sound critics. "The Parade" was a huge box office hit in Europe in 2012 after receiving three awards at Berlinale.- Actress
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The Davenport family was well known in theatrical circles. Her aunt, Fanny Davenport was considered one of the greatest stage actresses of her time and her father, Harry Davenport, was a Broadway star before later venturing into movies. Her mother, Alice Davenport, was a respected Broadway and film actress. With a background on the stage, Dorothy was in her early teens when she started playing bit parts in films. By the time she was 17, she was a star at Universal, where she would meet a young actor-assistant director-gopher-scenario writer named Wallace Reid. Called on to act with him in a film, she was frustrated by his apparent lack of acting ability on the first day, but was smitten with him on the third day of their work together. Dorothy was a horsewoman of distinction who had no regard for a man who couldn't stay in the saddle. When Wallace proved to be an excellent horseman, she was hooked.
After six months working on a job with another film company, Wallace returned to Universal and they married on October 13, 1913. The newlyweds continued to work. He directed and starred with Dorothy in two films a week for the next year. When Wallace left Universal Dorothy also left films, returning in 1916 to appear in a handful of them. In 1917 she gave birth to Wallace Reid Jr. and became a full-time mother and wife.
When Wallace Reid died from morphine addiction in 1923, Dorothy and Bessie Love made Human Wreckage (1923), a film that dealt with the dangers of narcotics. Dorothy would not return to the screen again until she directed and acted in The Red Kimono (1926). Dorothy later in life dabbled as a producer and a writer.- Director
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Arnaud Desplechin was born on 31 October 1960 in Roubaix, Nord, France. He is a director and writer, known for Kings & Queen (2004), The Sentinel (1992) and La vie des morts (1991).- Writer
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Giuseppe De Santis was born on 11 February 1917 in Fondi, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Tragic Hunt (1947), Giorni d'amore (1954) and Bitter Rice (1949). He was married to Gordana Miletic. He died on 16 May 1997 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Actor
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Ossie Davis was born on 18 December 1917 in Cogdell, Georgia, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Do the Right Thing (1989), Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) and Grumpy Old Men (1993). He was married to Ruby Dee. He died on 4 February 2005 in Miami Beach, Florida, USA.- Writer
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Terence Davies was born on 10 November 1945 in Liverpool, England, UK. He was a writer and director, known for Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), The House of Mirth (2000) and Benediction (2021). He died on 7 October 2023 in Mistley, Essex, England, UK.- Director
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Cheryl Dunye was born on 13 May 1966 in Liberia. She is a director and producer, known for The Watermelon Woman (1996), The Owls (2010) and Mommy Is Coming (2012).- Director
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Began her career directing music videos for acts like Tone Loc, Depeche Mode, Indigo Girls, NWA, Hanson and Sonic Youth and made her first feature in 92 with Guncrazy starring Drew Barrymore. Ms Barrymore received a Golden Globe Nomination. She then went on to direct feature films starring Chris Rock-CB4, Adam Sandler in Billy Madison, Dave Chappelle in Half Baked, Britney Spears in Crossroads and most recently, 13: The Musical for Netflix. She is also known for her documentary work on Jean Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child and The Punk Singer about Kathleen Hanna. After having 2 kids with her husband Mike D of the Beastie Boys she started a career in Television has directed on shows such as Grey's Anatomy, Dead To Me, The Politician and P Valley. She directed the pilot for High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. She continues to work in documentaries, episodic television and feature films.- Director
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Although he obtained a law degree from the Royal Hungarian University, Andre De Toth decided to become an actor, and spent several years on the stage. He then entered the Hungarian film industry, obtaining work as a writer, editor, second unit director and actor before finally becoming a director. He directed a few films just before the outbreak of WW II, when he fled to England. Alexander Korda gave him a job there, and when De Toth emigrated to the US in 1942, Korda got him a job as a second unit director on The Jungle Book (1942). De Toth made his debut as a director in American films in 1944. He was known for his tough, hard-edged pictures, whether westerns or urban crime dramas, and showed no compunction about depicting violence in as realistic a manner as possible, an unusual and somewhat controversial attitude for the time. Probably his best known film is House of Wax (1953), a Vincent Price horror film shot in 3-D. As De Toth only had one eye, that put him in the somewhat odd position of shooting a film in a process in which he would never be able to see the result. That didn't seem to matter, though; the film was a critical and financial success, and is generally considered to be the best 3-D film ever made.- Director
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Jacques Doillon was born on 15 March 1944 in Paris, France. He is a director and writer, known for The Little Gangster (1990), Ponette (1996) and Young Werther (1993).- Director
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Ruggero Deodato was born on May 7, 1939, in Potenza, Italy, and grew up outside Rome. One of his close friends at the time was Renzo Rossellini, the son of famed Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Knowing Ruggerio's love for the movies, Renzo persuaded him to work as a second unit director on some of his father's productions. From 1958-67 Deodato worked as a second unit director for several cult film directors such as Anthony M. Dawson (Antonio Margheriti), Riccardo Freda and Joseph Losey. Deodato's directorial debut was the action-fantasy Hercules, Prisoner of Evil (1964), replacing Margheriti who quit the production. Deodato's claim to fame was the spaghetti western Django (1966). His career took off in 1968 when he directed a number of films based on comic-book characters and musicals. It was while shooting one of these films that Deodato met, and later married, Silvia Dionisio.
From 1971-75 Deodato worked in television, directing the series All'ultimo minuto (1971) as well as TV commercials, including ones for Esso Oil, Band-Aid and Fanta. Deodato returned to filmmaking with an erotic melodrama and a police thriller. At the same time his marriage fell apart. In 1977 Deodato directed the notorious Last Cannibal World (1977) and later Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Deodato traveled to New York City and directed the disturbing thriller House on the Edge of the Park (1980), a semi-follow-up to Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972). Deodato made House on the Edge of the Park (1980) in just 19 days on a tiny budget. He then returned to directing action and horror flicks.
Deodato lives in Rome with his current partner, Micaela Rocco, and still works in movies and occasional TV series. He is rumored to be planning a sequel to "Cannibal Holocaust".- Director
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The daughter of a cavalry captain, she was raised by a grandmother in Paris, where she studied various forms of art with an emphasis on music and the opera. In 1905 she married engineer-novelist Marie-Louis Albert-Dulac and under his influence veered toward journalism. As one of the leading radical feminists of her day, she was editor of La Française, the organ of the French suffragette movement. She also doubled as theater and cinema critic of the publication and became increasingly enamored with film as an art form. In 1915 she formed, with her husband, a small production company, Delia Film, and began directing highly inventive, small-budget pictures. Chronologically, she was the second woman director in French films, after Alice Guy, a contemporary of Georges Méliès. With La fête espagnole (1920) and her masterpiece, _Souriante Madame Beudet, La (1922)_, Dulac emerged as a leading figure in the impressionist movement in French films. In the late 20s, she was an important part of the "second avant-garde" of the French cinema with the surrealistic _Coquille et le Clergyman, La (1927)_ and a number of other experimental films. In these as well as in her theoretical writing, her goal was "pure" cinema, free from any influence from literature, the stage, or even the other visual arts. She talked of "musically constructed" films, or "films made according to the rules of visual music." Dulac was also instrumental in the development of cinema clubs throughout France in the mid-20s. Sound put an end to her experimentations and her career as a director. From 1930 until her death she was in charge of newsreel production at Pathé, then at Gaumont.- Director
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William Churchill de Mille, the older brother of Hollywood legend Cecil B. DeMille (W.C. retained the family spelling of his name) and father of Tony Award-winning choreographer Agnes de Mille, was born in Washington, North Carolina, on July 25, 1878. His father, Henry C. DeMille, was a playwright who had six plays produced on Broadway from 1887-90, while his mother, Beatrice DeMille, the former Matilda Beatrice Samuel, wrote one play in collaboration with Harriet Ford, "The Greatest Thing in the World," that played on Broadway in 1900. It was perhaps inevitable that after graduating from Columbia University W.C. would become a successful Broadway playwright
His first play, "Strongheart," debuted on January 30, 1905, at the Hudson Theatre and ran for 66 performances, closing on February 20th of that year. It was revived at the Savoy Theatre on August 28th and played for 32 performances before closing on September 20th. His farce "The Genius" played in repertory at the Bijou Theatre for 35 performances starting on Halloween Day 1906, while his next play, "Classmates," written in collaboration with Margaret Turnbull, was more successful, totaling 102 performances after opening at the Hudson on August 29, 1907.
His true first hit, "The Warrens of Virginia," debuted at the Belasco Theatre on December 3, 1907. Produced by legendary Broadway impresario David Belasco, the play--the cast of which included deMille's brother Cecil--featured the Broadway debut of a young Canadian actress named Mary Pickford. Transferring from the Belasco to the Stuyvesant Theatre on May 4, 1908, the play racked up a total of 380 performances. W.C. collaborated with brother C.B. on the writing of "The Royal Mounted," which debuted at the Garrick Theatre on April 6, 1908. Co-directed by C.B. and Cyril Scott, the play closed after only 32 performances.
Three years later W.C. had another hit play, "The Woman," which opened at the Republic Theatre on September 19, 1911. This was a political thriller about a group of representatives and the governor of New York who, like the scheming politicos in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), concoct a stratagem to discredit a representative who outspokenly opposes a piece of legislation they favor. The drama had everything--confrontation, negotiations, calumnies and double dealing. It is unique as W.C. focuses on how people themselves affect politics, not on how politics affects them. The power relations between the individual characters reflects their governmental machinations. W.C.'s handling of points of view is interesting in that he allows each of the characters' voices to come through clearly, without prejudice, so the audience is not tipped to which ones are right or wrong. He constantly turns the tables on the audience, forcing them to redefine their perceptions of the characters, as no character in the play is innocent, the heroes and villains in politics proving to be one and the same. Though "The Woman" was a hit, playing for 247 performances, it would be another two years before a play of his was back on the boards. "A Tragedy of the Future" played in repertory with four other plays at the Princess Theatre for 115 performances beginning on May 14, 1913. "After Five," his next play (written in collaboration with C.B.), debuted at the Fulton Theatre on October 29, 1913, but was a flop, lasting only 13 performances. He would not appear on Broadway again for almost 16 years.
W.C. might have remained a Broadway playwright all his life if he had not joined his kid brother in Hollywood. He launched his movie career in 1914 at Famous Players-Lasky (later Paramount Pictures), eventually becoming a director of the corporation that his brother co-managed as part owner (their mother Beatrice wrote a dozen screenplays for the studio from 1916-17). Even among such monumental egos as Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky, C.B. loomed over the Paramount lot, as he was the most successful director of his era, the Steven Spielberg of the first half of the 20th century. While at Famous Players-Lasky-Paramount W.C. fulfilled the roles of director, screenwriter and producer, evolving into a highly respected member of the Hollywood community.
Many in Hollywood considered him a first-rate director, as good as--or at times better than--his brother, but few of his silent pictures, the medium in which he did most of his work, survive. "Variety," the bible of show business, in its review of Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920), W.C.'s adaptation of 'Leonard Marrick''s highly regarded comic novel, proclaimed, "Here is a better picture than has been made by any director . . . at any time."
At Paramount C.B. was ennobled with the title Director-General, whereas W.C. was called, affectionately, "Pop" by his co-workers. Unlike his brother, W.C. focused on presenting intimate stories rooted in strong human values. He never earned a reputation for being a visual director, unlike C.B., who was a master of spectacle and mise en scene and had to be forced by the Paramount board of directors to address contemporary subjects.
Although by the late 1920s "talkies" were displacing silent films, W.C. disparaged them as inferior to silents, a not-uncommon prejudice at the time, and started making fewer films. Many critics and filmmakers believed that the moving picture had reached the apogee of its maturity as a lively art in the mid-'20s, and were not happy to see all the craft developed to convey meaning through pictures junked in favor of what they considered a novelty--sound. His last film, His Double Life (1933) (co-directed with Arthur Hopkins), was shot in New York in 1933.
W.C. attempted a return to the theater. "Poor Old Jim" played in repertory with three other plays as part of the 1929 Little Theatre Tournament, but that would prove to be his last stint as a Broadway playwright. He produced and staged Henry Myers comedy "Hallowe'en" in 1936, but the play lasted only 12 performances at the Vanderbilt Theatre. Broadway would soon belong to a new generation, including his daughter Agnes De Mille, who would achieve Broadway immortality for her revolutionary choreography for Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein II's "Oklahoma!" Agnes went on to win the 1947 Tony Award for Best Choreography for their "Brigadoon".
The combination of the advent of talking pictures and the onset of the Great Depression doomed the Great White Way as a venue for truly popular entertainment. In the 1920s there were over 70 Broadway theaters offering a minimum of eight shows a week. By the mid-'30s many of the palaces had been converted into movie theaters, as 42nd Street began its descent into a slum dominated by all-night-long grindhouses. With the advent of realism and social commitment displayed by such innovative theatrical companies such as the Group Theater, the stage would soon succumb to a revolution hostile to the old-time playwrights who had sparked the lights on Old Broadway. The musicals survived, but Broadway was no longer a place where crowds of theater-goers moved from theater to theater, shopping for a show.
William C. De Mille served as the second president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He died on March 8, 1955. He was 76 years old.- Producer
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Rolf de Heer was born on 4 May 1951 in Heemskerk, Noord-Holland, Netherlands. He is a producer and director, known for Bad Boy Bubby (1993), Ten Canoes (2006) and Charlie's Country (2013).- Actor
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Xavier Dolan was born on 20 March 1989 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is an actor and producer, known for I Killed My Mother (2009), Tom at the Farm (2013) and Heartbeats (2010).- Writer
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Dörrie completed her schooling at a humanistic high school, from which she graduated in 1973 with her Abitur. In the same year he spent two years in the USA. There she studied film and acting at the Drama Department at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. This was followed by studies at the New School of Social Research in New York. She also worked in cafés and as a projectionist in the Goethe House in New York. In 1975 she returned to Germany. She then studied at the University of Television and Film in Munich. At the same time, she worked as a film critic journalist for the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Her final film is entitled "The First Waltz" and was broadcast on Bavarian television as "Max and Sandie". Doris Dörrie made various documentaries until 1982. In 1983 she made her first feature film in Munich called "Mitten ins Herz". Three years later she had a cinema hit with the title "Men". The well-known actors Uwe Ochsenknecht and Heiner Lauterbach star in the chaotic relationship comedy. The play became the most successful German film of 1986. Doris Dörrie was married to Helge Weindler from 1988 to 1996. Their daughter Carla was born in 1990.
In 1991 she had another cinema success with the title "Happy Birthday, Turk". She filmed the novel by the German writer Jakob Arjouni, a novel in the Kayankaya series. The witty film is in the tradition of classic detective films and tells the story of the search for a missing person in the Frankfurt milieu. The Turkish private detective Kayankaya, played by Hansa Czypionka, experiences police corruption. In 1994, Doris Dörrie shot the comedy film "Nobody Loves Me" with Maria Schrader. This production is about personal happiness. The work was honored with the silver film ribbon, the leading actress Maria Schrader with the gold film ribbon.
Her other film works include "No Trace of Romanticism" from 1980, "Between" from 1981, "Love in Germany" from 1989 and "Enlightenment Guaranteed" from 1999. Among all her film works The director also wrote the script herself. The films were often cast with well-known actors such as Senta Berger, Gottfried John or Uwe Ochsenknecht. She also shot the documentary entitled "What can it be?" In addition to her role behind the camera, she also performed guest roles in front of the camera. For example, she played in the film "The Leading Man" from 1977 or in "King Kong's Fist" and in "Back to Go" from 2000.
In addition to her film work, Doris Dörrie realized literary projects. This is how the short stories entitled "Love, Pain and All the Damned Stuff" and "What Do You Want from Me?" were created. She also wrote the short story "The Man of My Dreams" and the novel "What Do We Do Now?" In 1991 her collection of short stories entitled "Forever and Ever" was created. The 300-page work was well received by critics. In 2002 her film work entitled "Naked" and her novel "Happy" followed. In 2005 she staged Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Rigoletto" at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich under the musical direction of Zubin Mehta.
In the same year, 2005, she directed Giacomo Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" at the Gärtnerplatztheater. At the Salzburg Festival in 2006 she staged Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "La finta Giardiniera".- Director
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Philippe de Broca born in 1933 worked as an assistant for Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut ( "Les 400 coups" aka "The 400 blows" ). From 1960 to 2004 he directed over 30 full-length feature films, including the highly successful adventure movies such as "That Man from Rio" (L'Homme de Rio) in 1964 and "Le Magnifique" in 1973, romantic comedies as "Le Cavaleur" in 1979, epics as "Chouans" in 1988 and "On Guard" (Le Bossu) in 1999. His personal favorite film was "King of Hearts" ( Le Roi de Coeur) that he wrote, directed and produced.- Director
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The son of a wealthy physician, Emile de Antonio grew up in the tough coal-mining town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and it made a deep impression on him. His sympathies were always with working-class people (although he was a Harvard graduate, he was at times a dock worker, a peddler, the captain of a river barge and a broker in war-surplus equipment), and his documentaries are decidedly Marxist in philosophy. His most famous film is probably Point of Order! (1964), about the Army-McCarthy hearings ten years previously, but his most controversial films would be Millhouse (1971), a scathing indictment of then-President Richard Nixon, and In the Year of the Pig (1968), a radically left-wing perspective on the Vietnam War.- Director
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Kirby Dick is a two time Emmy-award winning and two-time Academy award-nominated documentary film director. His most recent film, The Hunting Ground (2015), a monumental exposé about sexual assault on college campuses, premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, was released by Radius/The Weinstein Company and CNN, is the 2016 recipient of the Producer Guild of America's Stanley Kramer award, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. His previous film, The Invisible War (2012), a groundbreaking investigation into the epidemic of rape within the US military, won two Emmy Awards for Best Documentary and Outstanding Investigative Journalism, the 2012 Independent Spirit Award 2012 for Best Documentary, a Peabody Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He also directed Twist of Faith (2004), the story of a man confronting the trauma of his past sexual abuse by a Catholic priest, which was also nominated for an Academy Award. Other films include Outrage (2009), nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006), a breakthrough investigation of the MPAA's secretive film ratings system, and Derrida (2002), a complex portrait of the world-renowned French philosopher Jacques Derrida. He is the 2012 recipient of the Nestor Almendros Prize for Courage and Filmmaking and the 2013 Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize.- Writer
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Guy Debord was born on 28 December 1931 in Paris, France. He was a writer and director, known for In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978), Howlings in Favour of De Sade (1952) and Fuerza nueva: Canción para los obreros de Seat (2019). He was married to Alice Becker-Ho and Michele Bernstein. He died on 30 November 1994 in Bellevue-la-Montagne, Auvergne, France.- Actor
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Considered to be a man ahead of his time, Guru Dutt was one of the greatest icons of commercial Indian cinema. Although he made less than ten films, they are believed to be the best to come from Bollywood's Golden Age, known both for their ability to reach out to the common man and for their artistic and lyrical content, and they went on to become trend-setters that have influenced Bollywood ever since. But for all his genius, there was a shroud of tragedy that overshadowed his career and life.
Dutt was born in Mysore on July ninth, 1925, the eldest son of a headmaster and a housewife who was a part-time writer. As a child, he had to deal with a strained relationship between his parents, hostility from his mother's family, and the death of a close relative. He received his early education in Calcutta, and in 1941, he joined the Uday Shankar India Culture Center, where he received basic training in the performing arts under dance maestro Uday Shankar. Afterward, in 1944, he had a short stint as a telephone operator.
Dutt entered the Indian film industry in 1944, working as a choreographer in Prabhat Studios. There, he became friends with Dev Anand (whom he met when they worked on the film Hum Ek Hain (1946)) and Rehman Khan. These early friendships helped ease his way into Bollywood. After Prabhat went under in 1947, Dutt moved to Mumbai, where he worked with the leading directors of the time: Amiya Chakrabarty in Girls' School (1949) and Gyan Mukherjee in Sangram (1946).
He got his big break when Dev Anand invited him to direct a film in his newly formed company Navketan Films. Dutt made his directorial debut with Gamble (1951), which starred Dev Anand. The film was an urban crime thriller that paid homage to classic film noir. However, it also carried its own elements that ensured it was not a remake of a Hollywood film: notably, songs were used to further the story's narrative, and close-up shots were used frequently. The film was a success and became a trend-setter for future crime films. On the personal front, Dutt met his wife, playback singer Geeta Dutt (née Roy), during the song-recording sessions of Gamble (1951), and they married May twenty-sixth, 1953.
Dutt's next releases were Jaal (1952) and Baaz (1953). Dutt made his acting debut in the latter film, which he also directed. But while they were average successes, he finally tasted success with Aar-Paar (1954), another crime thriller, but with a far more polished story and look. Then came Mr. & Mrs. '55 (1955), a frothy romantic comedy focusing on women's' rights; and C.I.D. (1956), yet another crime thriller in which Waheeda Rehman made her debut.
His next films, Thirst (1957) and Paper Flowers (1959), are regarded as his best work. Thirst (1957) was his masterpiece, about a poet trying to achieve success in a hypocritical, uncaring world. It was a box-office hit and is ranked as his greatest film ever. In contrast, Paper Flowers (1959) was a miserable flop at the box office: the semi-autobiographical story of a tragic love affair set against the backdrop of the film industry was deemed too morbid for the audience to swallow and went right over audience's heads. Although in later years the film received critical acclaim for its cinematography and has gained a cult following, Dutt, who had put his soul into the film, was devastated over its failure and never directed another film.
Although he had sworn off directing, Dutt continued to produce and act in films, notably the period dramas Chaudhvin Ka Chand (1960) and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962). The latter film, interestingly, is controversial because it is debated whether Dutt had ghost-directed the film. Dutt's personal life had become complicated: he had gotten romantically involved with his protégé Waheeda Rehman and his wife Geeta Dutt had separated from him as a result. Rehman too had distanced herself from him. Also, Dutt, an ambitious person, felt he had achieved too much too soon professionally - there was nothing better to be achieved, and this caused a vacuum in his life. Unable to cope with all the trauma and emptiness, he took to heavy drinking.
On October tenth, 1964, Dutt was found dead in his bed. The cause of death was deemed a combination of alcohol and sleeping pills, although a debate still lingers over whether his death was by accident or a successful suicide attempt. Geeta Dutt suffered a nervous break-down as a result of his death and also took to alcohol, eventually drinking herself to death, dying in 1972 as a result of cirrhosis of the liver.
His death was an irreplaceable loss to Indian cinema. And it was a tragic twist of fate that his films, most of which were discounted in his life-time, would be regarded as cult classics after his death. Guru Dutt would always be known, even if posthumously, as the Guru of Bollywood's Golden Age and one of the world's most important international auteurs.- Director
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Miguel Pamintuan De Leon, also known as Mike De Leon, is a noted Filipino film director, cinematographer, scriptwriter and film producer. He was born in Manila on May 24, 1947 to Manuel De Leon and Imelda Pamintuan. His interest I filmmaking began when he pursued a master's degree in Art History at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. De Leon first made two short films namely: 'Sa Bisperas', 1972, and 'Monologo' (Monologue), 1975. He established the Cinema Artists Philippines in 1975. He produced Lino Brocka's 'Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag', while also acting as the said film's cinematographer in 1975. For 'Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag', De Leon won best cinematography awarded by the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences [Famas]. De Leon's films are a full reflection of the Filipino psyche that sought answer for questions on social class belonging, political absurdities, and fragmentation's in various form. His first major full-length work was, 'Itim' (Black), in 1976. It was an in-depth study of guilt and violence and shows De Leon's delicate balancing of cinematic elements to project mood and character. It was voted by the Philippine's Urian Awards as one the Ten Outstanding Films of the Decade: 1970-1979. The film also won him the best director award during the 1978 Asian Film Festival held in Sydney, Australia. When De Leon created 'Kung Mangarap Ka't Magising' in 1977, became a tribute to his grandmother Dona Sisang to celebrate of the family's film company, LVN Pictures. Known for his varied experiments in styles of directing, he pushed the birth of the new musical in 'Kakabakaba Ka Ba? ' won for De Leon the Urian award for best director. His other movies include 'Kisapmata' (1981), 'Batch'81' (1982) and 'Sister Stella L.' (1984). In these films he tackled social and political issues with powerful and disturbing imagery. His blockbuster film, 'Hindi Nahahati ang Langit' (1985) was an adaptation from an earlier Filipino Komiks version of the same title. In 1987,De Leon also made 'Bilanggo sa Dilim', a full-length video commissioned by Sony Entertainment. De Leon explored subjects such as incest, fraternity violence, and the Filipino workers' cause. These were themes that were portrayed in the films 'Kisapmata', 'Batch '81' and 'Sister Stella L' respectively. These films became cinematic masterpieces in Philippine History of Filmography and later listed as the Philippines's Ten Outstanding Films of the Decade: 1980-1989 by the Philippines (FAP) where De Leon also won a best screenplay award, For 'Sister Stella L'. De Leon won best director and best screenplay in the Philippines's Urian Awards in 1984, 'Kisapmata' and 'Batch '81' were presented during the Directors' Fortnight at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. The film 'Sister Stella L'. was an entry during the 1985 Venice Film Festival. De Leon pioneered the use of computer graphics animation for the TV advertising industry in 1988. De Leon's film, 'Aliwan Paradise', became a part of the Southern Winds in 1993, which is a collection of four films from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Japan, The NHK and Japan Foundation commissioned the film anthology.- Director
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Mark Donskoy was born on 6 March 1901 in Odessa, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire [now Ukraine]. He was a director and writer, known for Gorky 1: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (1938), Foma Gordeev (1959) and The Taras Family (1945). He died on 21 March 1981 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia].- Writer
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He was born in 1918, although there isn't a consensus as some books date his birth in 1925. He was one of the main directors of the Spanish horror boom in the 70s, specially for his quartet of films about the living dead templars which started with Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972).- Director
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Tom DiCillo is an American director, cinematographer, writer and (sometimes) actor born in Camp Le Jeune, North Carolina, and who studied film at New York University. During his early career he began working with director Jim Jarmusch as a cinematographer on films that include Stranger Than Paradise (1984) and Coffee and Cigarettes (1986). He also worked with Howard Brookner on the documentary Burroughs (1983), which featured the William S. Burroughs. His experience as cinematographer proved invaluable and he was soon writing and directing his own films.
Notable directorial projects from Tom include Johnny Suede (1991), Living in Oblivion (1995), The Real Blonde (1997), and When You're Strange (2009).
He is a good friend of Steve Buscemi and is thanked in Trees Lounge (1996), Steve's directorial debut.- Writer
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Bill Douglas was born on 17 April 1934 in Newcraighall, Scotland, UK. He was a writer and actor, known for My Childhood (1972), Comrades (1986) and My Way Home (1978). He died on 18 June 1991 in Barnstaple, Devon, England, UK.- Director
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Born in Bristol, England, Thorold Dickinson began his film career during the silent era as a writer. He went to work for Ealing in the 1930s, first as an editor and then as a director. He directed or produced military training films during World War II, and after the war he turned out a string of unique and well-received films, such as The Queen of Spades (1949), about an elderly woman who strikes a deal with the devil that will enable her to always win at playing cards, and Secret People (1952) a story of resistance against an undemocratic regime which features two sisters in exile. A resister from their past draws the younger of the two into an act of violence which harms neutral civilians.
In 1955 Dickinson directed Hill 24 Doesn't Answer (1955), a drama about the 1947 war for independence in Israel, which was the first Israeli film to be distributed worldwide. The next year he went to work for the UN Department of Public Information as the head of its film division, producing several documentaries. He was appointed president of the International Federation of Film Societies, and in the early 1960s he was offered, and accepted, a position on the teaching staff of the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where he instituted a pioneering postgraduate course in the research and study of Film Form and Film History. He retired from London University in 1971 as its first Professor of Film, and was then awarded the CBE. He died in London in 1984.- Actress
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Joan Darling began her career with the New York improvisational theater troupe "Premise Players", and soon graduated to off-Broadwy and Broadway productions. She made her film debut in 1964 and, in the early '70s, landed a regular role on the Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law (1971) TV series. In addition to acting in TV series, she began to write for them. Her first directorial job was for the pilot of the hit '70s TV series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976) and she directed several of the series' episodes. She became one of the first female TV directors to be steadily employed on various series, and directed many episodes of M*A*S*H (1972), the The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) show and The Bob Newhart Show (1972). She made her film debut in 1977 with the critically acclaimed but financially unsuccessful First Love (1977), and has made several theatrical and made-for-TV movies since then.- Director
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British director Clive Donner was born in West Hampstead, London, England. By age 18 he was already working in the film business, as an office clerk at Denham Studios. He eventually became an editor and then graduated to the director's chair. After making a series of TV commercials, he made his theatrical directorial debut with The Secret Place (1957). In the 1960s he went from smaller, harder-edged black-and-white films to more commercial, "now" films, such as Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968), What's New Pussycat (1965) and the disastrous flop Alfred the Great (1969). He worked only sporadically in features after that--two more bombs, The Nude Bomb (1980) and Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981) didn't help matters--and he returned, for the most part, to television. Among his best work there were a critically acclaimed filming of Frederic Raphael's thriller Rogue Male (1976) and a faithful and well-received adaptation of Charles Dickens' famous novel, A Christmas Carol (1984) with George C. Scott as Scrooge. Unfortunately, that was followed by the notorious Arthur the King (1983), a bizarre, convoluted and disjointed mess about which the less said, the better.- Director
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Storm De Hirsch, born in New Jersey, was an American poet and filmmaker. She was a key figure in the New York avant-garde film scene of the 1960s, and one of the founding members of the Film-Makers' Cooperative. Although often overlooked by historians, in recent years she has been recognized as a pioneer of underground cinema. Like many experimental filmmakers at the time, de Hirsch did not begin her artistic career as a filmmaker; she was a poet who had published at least two collections by 1965. She turned to filmmaking because she wanted to find a new mode of expression for her thoughts that went beyond words on the page. In 1962 she made her first film and soon became active in the New York underground film movement. In addition to making films, de Hirsch taught at various institutions, including Bard College and New York's School of Visual Arts. After her husband's death she was forced to give up her studio, and stopped making films. She died in a Manhattan nursing home in 2000, following a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.- Director
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Michel Deville, a singular talent in French cinema. For, except during a short period where he made two or three standard commercial films (but that was to repay the debts of his own film company, due to the defection of a business partner), Deville made pictures which, without being too elitist, show a distinctive talent and personality. The French director-writer-producer managed, all through a career that spanned four decades and a half (from 1958 to 2005), to play a little music of his own, never resting on his laurels but always trying something new. And even if not all of his works are perfect, Deville's taste for research makes the bulk of them at least interesting or challenging. Born on 13 April 1931 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Michel Deville graduated from high school and started studying literature but soon branched out into movies. From 1951 to 1958, he learned the tricks of his future trade by being assistant-director, mainly to Henri Decoin, with whom he collaborated thirteen times, notably on two important films, The Truth About Bebe Donge (1952) in 1951 and Razzia (1955) in 1952. After a false start in 1958 (A Bullet in the Gun Barrel (1958), a run-of-the-mill crime flick, co-directed by Charles Gérard), Deville succeeded in making a name for himself two years later with his first true film Ce soir ou jamais (1961). Film critics did not miss out on the already gray-haired thirty-year-old director as they immediately identified what made his specificity : telling about love, seduction and feelings with subtle casualness and quizzing cruelty. For the ten years that followed, working in tandem with screenwriter Nina Companeez, Deville made a series of allegedly "light-hearted" comedies, surely full of charm and elegance but whose froth soon evaporates to reveal unexpected gravity. The result can range from slightly superficial (Girl's Apartment (1963), The Bear and the Doll (1970)) to genuinely moving (Adorable Liar (1962)) to profoundly tragic (The Diary of an Innocent Boy (1968), a cruel tale about desire, love and the difficulty to love; Raphaël ou le débauché (1971), one of the most beautiful romantic films ever made). After ceasing his collaboration with Companeez, Deville's films became darker and darker, the director choosing to explore new forms of expression (narrative deconstruction in La femme en bleu (1973)); the use of subjective camera and long sequence shots in Dossier 51 (1978), etc.) as well as new themes such as disillusionment, impossible dreams and imagination as a way of survival. In the nineteen eighties Deville is at the top of his art. A Sweet Journey (1980), Deep Water (1981), Les capricieux (1984) (TV movie) and Death in a French Garden (1985) examine the forms and variations of the loving feeling with consummate mastery while Le paltoquet (1986) and The Reader (1988) are two fascinating forays into the territory of sheer imagination. As of 1990, the director's art somewhat declined. Films like Sweetheart (1992), The Gods Must Be Daring (1997) and The Art of Breaking Up (2005), his final effort in 2005, more or less run on empty. But there are two magnificent exceptions to that rule: Aux petits bonheurs (1994) (1993), the elegant bittersweet chronicle of love being threatened by the coming of old age, and La maladie de Sachs (1999) (1999), a brilliant adaptation of Martin Winckler's novel, consisting of brief loosely related scenes, considered impossible to move onto the screens. An excellent technician and theoretician, Deville also established himself as a great actors director. All noticed how good he was - not unlike George Cukor - at directing women. Indeed Anna Karina, Marina Vlady, Michèle Morgan, Brigitte Bardot, Françoise Fabian, Lea Massari, Anémone, Miou-Miou, Fanny Ardant, Zabou Breitman and several others, did shine before his loving camera. But this does not mean that their male counterparts had anything to complain about when directed by him. Thanks to Michel Deville Claude Rich, Michel Piccoli, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Maurice Ronet, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Christophe Malavoy, Richard Bohringer, Claude Piéplu, Jean Yanne, Daniel Auteuil and many others naturally, also found gratifying and memorable roles. When Michel Deville decided to retire in 2005, he could do it with a clear conscience: he sure left his mark on the seventh art and even if his name is a little forgotten today, film historians will no doubt recognize his true worth some day in the future.- Director
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Louis Daquin was born on 20 May 1908 in Calais, Pas-de-Calais, France. He was a director and actor, known for Le point du jour (1949), Les frères Bouquinquant (1947) and The Thistles of the Baragan (1957). He died on 2 October 1980 in Paris, France.- Director
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Harry d'Arrast's entry into the movie industry was somewhat unusual--he was wounded while serving in the French army during WW I, and while recuperating in a military hospital met French-born American film director George Fitzmaurice, who invited him to come to Hollywood after he had recovered. He did so, and got work as a researcher and technical adviser on several films, including Charles Chaplin's A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923), then became Chaplin's assistant on The Gold Rush (1925). He made his directorial debut in 1927 and directed seven films until he left Hollywood in 1933. Although his output was sparse, his films were universally acclaimed for their wit, sophistication, beautiful photography and smooth pacing. D'Arrast often found himself in conflict with his producers, however, for his refusal to cut corners and speed up production, and in 1933 departed Hollywood for Europe. He made one film in Spain, then returned to his home in France. He spent the rest of his life at his family estate outside of Monte Carlo, and made his living at the roulette tables in the Monte Carlo casino.- Director
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Robert Day worked his way up from clapper boy to camera operator to full-fledged lensman in his native England before giving directing a shot in the mid-1950s. His first film as director, the black-comic The Green Man (1956) for the writer-producer team of 'Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, garnered fine reviews and a classic notoriety; using this as a starting point, Day went on to become one of the industry's busiest directors. He relocated to Hollywood in the 1960s and began directing scads of TV episodes and made-for-TV movies on this side of the Atlantic. He occasionally turns up in bits in his own productions, including The Haunted Strangler (1958), Two Way Stretch (1960), the mini-series Peter and Paul (1981), etc.- Writer
- Director
- Actress
Virginie Despentes was born on 13 June 1969 in Nancy, France. She is a writer and director, known for Baise-moi (2000), Bye Bye Blondie (2011) and Mutantes: Punk Porn Feminism (2009).- Director
- Editor
- Cinematographer
Donna Deitch was born on 8 June 1945 in San Francisco, California, USA. She is a director and editor, known for Desert Hearts (1985), NYPD Blue (1993) and Angel on My Shoulder (1998).- Producer
- Writer
- Actress
New Yorker Lena Dunham is the daughter of a painter, Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons, a designer and photographer. Dunham was educated at Oberlin College, Ohio, graduating with a creative writing degree. It was while at Oberlin that she began writing shorts and feature films. In 2009, Dunham created the web series Delusional Downtown Divas (2009), which gained a cult following.
Also in 2009, Dunham released Creative Nonfiction (2009), her first feature film. She went on to write, direct and star in Tiny Furniture (2010), which scored two Independent Spirit Award nominations. In 2012, Dunham came to the attention of a wider audience with the HBO series Girls (2012) created by and starring Dunham and executive produced by Judd Apatow.- Director
- Producer
- Editor
Charles Dekeukeleire was born on 27 February 1905 in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium. He was a director and producer, known for Thema's van de inspiratie (1938), Processies en karnavals (1937) and The Evil Eye (1937). He died on 2 June 1971 in Werchter, Flanders, Belgium.- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Writer
Ziad Doueiri (born in 1963) is a Lebanese-born cinematographer, film director and writer. He is best known for his award winning film West Beirut. At the age of 18, during the Lebanese civil war, Ziad leaves Lebanon to study in the US. He now lives in France and works in Europe and the US. Doueiri first gained notice from his work under Quentin Tarantino as camera assistant for movies that include Jackie Brown (film), From Dusk Till Dawn, Pulp Fiction, and Reservoir Dogs. Doueiri worked between Los Angeles and Beirut until not long after September 11, 2011, after which he returned to work from Beirut.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Writer
Segundo de Chomón became involved in film through his wife, who was an actress in Pathé films. In 1902 he became a concessionary for Pathé in Barcelona, distributing its product in Spanish-speaking countries and managing a factory for the coloring of Pathé films. He began shooting footage of Spanish locations for the company, then in 1905 moved to Paris where he became a trick film specialist. The body of work he created over five years was outstanding. Films such as The Red Spectre (1907), Kiri-Kis (1907), The Invisible Thief (1909) and A Panicky Picnic (1909) are among the most imaginative and technically accomplished of their age.
De Chomón created fantastical narratives embellished with ingenious effects, gorgeous color, innovative hand-drawn and puppet animation, tricks of the eye that surprise and delight, and startling turns of surreal imagination. It is curious why he is not generally known as one of the early cinema masters, except among the cognoscenti in the field. Perhaps it is because there is a smaller body of work than that created by Georges Méliès (his works can perhaps be described as a cross between that of Méliès and another who combined trickery with animation, Émile Cohl); perhaps it's because he was a Spaniard working in France for the key part of his film career that has meant that neither side has championed him as much as they might have done. De Chomón carried on as a filmmaker, specializing in trick effects, working for Pathé, Itala and others, and contributing effects work to two of the most notable films of the silent era, Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria (1914) and Abel Gance's Napoleon (1927).- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Director of two classic films of Mexican Cinema, Compadre Mendoza, El (1933) and ¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa! (1935), De Fuentes began his career as second assistant director in Santa (1931), the first "talkie" produced in Mexico. His technical abilities promoted him to direct Anónimo, El (1932). De Fuentes is considered a pioneer in Mexican movies and a truly gifted director who combined superb technical abilities with a extraordinary sense for visu al narrative. His best films are those made on the early years of Mexican film industry. He "invented" a genre: the Mexican comedy (comedia ranchera) with Allá en el Rancho Grande (1936), the first Mexican film with great success in foreign markets -a sort of musical Como Agua Para Chocolate (1992) of the 30s. He discovered Gabriel Figueroa and pioneered genres such as horror, melodrama and historical. De Fuentes was the first Mexican director who made a film in color: Asi se Quiere en Jalisco (1942). He also was the first to make a film in coproduction with another country: Jalisco Canta en Sevilla (1948), coproduced with Spain.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze was a French critic, actor, and director. He was born March 15, 1920 in Paris, France. Doniol-Valcroze is known for having co-founded the film magazine "Cahiers du Cinéma" in 1951 along with partners André Bazin and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. The magazine was first edited by Doniol-Valcroze between 1951-1957. As a film critic, he was among the first to champion many now-legendary filmmakers, including Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, and Nicholas Ray. He played a central role as a critic in the French New Wave discussing the emergence of the new cinema as the co-founder of "Cahiers du Cinéma", and by hiring talented emerging critic/directors such as Truffaut, Godard and Rohmer to work for the magazine. His own works in this area include directing the film "L'Eau à la Bouche" and acting in a few New Wave films, including Chantal Akerman's cult feminist classic "Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles". He was friends with François Truffaut who shot his first short film "Une Visite" in his apartment. He also shot TV short documentaries on his friend Jean-Luc Godard, which highlighted Godard's views on cinema, including "Godard à propos de Brigitte Bardot". The Director's Fortnight was founded in 1968 during the strikes which closed down the Cannes Film Festival. The Fortnight was the idea of Jacques Doniol-Valcroze. The event was sponsored by his fledgling Société des Réalisateurs de Films (Film Directors Society) with the intention of opening the Cannes Festival up to lesser known filmmakers, without any bias against budgets or shooting formats. He died on October 6, 1989, age 69, in Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes, France.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Jean Delannoy began his film career in the 1920s as an actor. By the 1930s he had switched careers and become an editor, then a short-subjects director. By the mid-'30s he was a full-fledged director, and soon garnered a reputation as a sensitive, understated craftsman with a thorough command of the medium. By the 1950s, however, he was doing overheated melodramas and overblown epics, including a particularly undistinguished version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956)), and he was soon reduced to churning out such drivel as Action Man (1967) (US title: "Action Man") and The Double Bed (1965) (US title: "The Double Bed").- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Eduardo de Gregorio was born on 12 September 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a writer and director, known for Corps perdus (1989), Stolen Tangos (2001) and Surreal Estate (1976). He died on 13 October 2012 in Paris, France.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Slatan Dudow was born on 30 January 1903 in Zaribrod, Bulgaria. He was a director and writer, known for Frauenschicksale (1952), Verwirrung der Liebe (1959) and Christine (1963). He died on 12 July 1963 in Fürstenwalde, Brandenburg, Germany.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
German film director E.A. Dupont was an influential critic and newspaper columnist before breaking into the film industry. He wrote several screenplays and worked as a story editor for Richard Oswald before turning to directing in 1917. Over the next eight years Dupont became a respected exponent of the German expressionist movement. He was particularly acclaimed for his film Variety (1925), which stood out for brilliant lighting effects and fluid camera work. Encouraged by his success, Dupont left Decla-Bioskop and joined Universal in Hollywood, but only completed one film. Crossing the Atlantic again, he signed with British National Pictures in 1928. He briefly became their leading director, again demonstrating his visual flair with two prestige productions: Moulin Rouge (1928) and Piccadilly (1929). The latter was BIP's most expensively made picture up to this time.
After the advent of sound Dupont's career began to falter. His first "talkie", the "Titanic" story Atlantic (1929)-- shot in both English and French-- was an expensive flop, due mainly to poor dialogue and stilted performances. His next two ventures, respectively in France and Germany, had an even worse critical reception. Dupont next tried his luck in Hollywood. After 1933 he worked at different times for Universal, Paramount and Warner Brothers. Critical success proved elusive, as almost all of his assignments were low-budget second features. After being fired from the set of Hell's Kitchen (1939) for slapping a junior member of the cast who had mocked his accent, Dupont spent most of the 1940s in Hollywood as a talent agent and publicist. He eventually resumed his directing career with an offbeat minor film noir, The Scarf (1951), and a watchable precursor to The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), The Steel Lady (1953). Among his last films was the notorious sci-fi stinker The Neanderthal Man (1953). He died of cancer in December 1956.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Fernando Di Leo was born on 11 January 1932 in San Ferdinando di Puglia, Puglia, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Caliber 9 (1972), Killer contro killers (1985) and Shoot First, Die Later (1974). He was married to Maria Pia Conte. He died on 1 December 2003 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
- Director
- Editor
Bruno Dumont was born on 14 March 1958 in Bailleul, Nord, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France. He is a writer and director, known for Li'l Quinquin (2014), The Life of Jesus (1997) and Camille Claudel 1915 (2013).