Daniel Kremer

Daniel Kremer

Birthday: 1984-07-23

Place of Birth: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Biography: Filmmaker, film historian, biographer, and professional film archivist Daniel Kremer grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated Temple University's film program and now lives in San Francisco. In 2007, while living in Philadelphia, he directed his first feature Sophisticated Acquaintance (2007). His second feature A Trip to Swadades (2008), which was shot on black-and-white super-16mm film, won three Best Feature Film awards. Following that film's international festival tour (which included Rotterdam), he moved to New York City, where he lived for nearly seven years. At one point, he studied to be an Orthodox rabbi, but gave it up to continue pursuing film. In 2011, he completed his acclaimed follow-up feature, The Idiotmaker's Gravity Tour (2011). The film was lensed predominantly in India. Subsequent to that, he directed Raise Your Kids on Seltzer (2015), Ezer Kenegdo (2017), Overwhelm the Sky (2019), and Even Just (2020) in the San Francisco Bay Area, using independent filmmaking icon Rob Nilsson's regular cast and crew. The critically lauded Overwhelm the Sky was given special coverage for having been released in the classic epic "roadshow" format, and was picked up for distribution by Kino Lorber. His partly autobiographical cinema-themed essay documentary It's a Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie Point (2023) garnered raves from the British Film Institute, veteran critic Gerald Peary (For the Love of Movies), and many others. Kremer has screened work at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Joseph Conrad Festival in Krakow, Poland, Maryland International Film Festival, San Francisco Independent Film Festival, Brussels International Film Festival, Glasgow Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Fantasporto Film Festival in Porto, Portugal, Rivers Edge International Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, and many other international venues. His second book, currently in editing at Oxford University Press, is the first to cover filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver (Hester Street, Chilly Scenes of Winter, Crossing Delancey). His first book, about the life and career of filmmaker Sidney J. Furie (The Ipcress File, Lady Sings the Blues, The Boys in Company C, The Entity), was published by University Press of Kentucky's Screen Classics Series in November 2015. His third book, now being researched, will be the first to cover the life and career of classic Hollywood director Irving Rapper (Now Voyager, The Corn is Green, The Brave One, Marjorie Morningstar). As a film scholar, he has provided DVD/Blu-Ray commentary tracks for sixteen companies. As a Trailers from Hell guru, he is listed alongside other gurus like Guillermo del Toro, Luca Guadagnino, Eli Roth, Joe Dante, Edgar Wright, John Landis, Roger Corman, John Sayles, and many others.

Movies

Danny and the Scatman
Danny and the Scatman

The story of how two people have chosen to deal with what many consider a disability. One is a young...

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It's a Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie Point
It's a Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie Point

Worlds collide in this unconventional essay film, when filmmaker, film historian, and archivist Dani...

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Xenolith Atlas
Xenolith Atlas

An imagined plague diary...

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The Fourth Movement
The Fourth Movement

Four interlocking stories with a Jazz theme. Four Women go out to visit the sites of the jazz clubs ...

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Arid Cut
Arid Cut

Sky-high housing costs, rents no one can pay, urban development, and street crime make life difficul...

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Paralyzed Segments: Suzanne Pleshette Tangled Up in Codes
Paralyzed Segments: Suzanne Pleshette Tangled Up in Codes

A video essay about fifties and early sixties social and sexual mores, in life and in cinema, and ho...

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La Vie en Gris: The Anglophone Louis Malle in Seven Pictures
La Vie en Gris: The Anglophone Louis Malle in Seven Pictures

Filmmaker Louis Malle worked adjacent to the French Nouvelle Vague, but was admittedly never fully p...

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Cinema of the Pilpul: A Talmudic View of Early Holocaust Cinema
Cinema of the Pilpul: A Talmudic View of Early Holocaust Cinema

The most that mainstream culture knows of the Talmud is from the finale scene of Schindler's List, w...

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Ben Fries the Slaves
Ben Fries the Slaves

Fourteen year-old Ben Fries has a cult following, a 22-year-old girlfriend, and a mortal enemy named...

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The Wind Blows Where It Wishes
The Wind Blows Where It Wishes

Carla Durkow is a filmmaker from Istanbul who screens her latest work, entitled Farewell Mighty Spir...

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Survival Scars: Franklin J. Schaffner as Auteur
Survival Scars: Franklin J. Schaffner as Auteur

Franklin J. Schaffner is the man behind a great many iconic American films: Planet of the Apes (1968...

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David Cronenberg Presents Wireless Internet
David Cronenberg Presents Wireless Internet

David Cronenberg (the well-known Canadian director's American film-student counterpart) is making an...

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Ammo for Shooting Clouds: John G. Avildsen Before Rocky
Ammo for Shooting Clouds: John G. Avildsen Before Rocky

John G. Avildsen has only recently cemented his reputation as the "king of the underdogs," owing to ...

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Looking to Get Out: A Comparative Analysis of the Ted Kotcheff Vision
Looking to Get Out: A Comparative Analysis of the Ted Kotcheff Vision

What do the movies First Blood and Weekend at Bernie's have in common? One man with a clear and curi...

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The Brando Interregnum: The Decade of Marlon's Dirty Dozen 1962-1972
The Brando Interregnum: The Decade of Marlon's Dirty Dozen 1962-1972

Between One Eyed Jacks (1961) and The Godfather (1972), Marlon Brando appeared in twelve feature fil...

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Jack of Three Trades: In Focus on Nicholson the Director
Jack of Three Trades: In Focus on Nicholson the Director

We all know Jack Nicholson the actor. But few know the history of Jack Nicholson the screenwriter, a...

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Elective Vicissitudes: The Radical Exiles of Jules Dassin
Elective Vicissitudes: The Radical Exiles of Jules Dassin

In 1968, filmmaker Jules Dassin collaborated with Ruby Dee and civil rights activist Julian Mayfield...

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The Great Ecstasy of Tree-Climber Otto, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Late Preminger
The Great Ecstasy of Tree-Climber Otto, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Late Preminger

Otto Preminger wasn't only one of the most famous directors of classic Hollywood. He was a presence,...

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Clear Lines of Sight: Sidney J. Furie at Paramount
Clear Lines of Sight: Sidney J. Furie at Paramount

Canadian-born filmmaker Sidney J. Furie made his name with British hits like The Young Ones (1961), ...

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Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano
Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano

Perhaps at first glance, the filmography of Silvio Narizzano appears unremarkable. Thanks to his sle...

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Ezer Kenegdo
Ezer Kenegdo

Frictions develop when Yisroel "Izzy" Jonigkeyt, a Chassidic Jew from Crown Heights, travels to San ...

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Dead Neon: The Many Faces of Lenny Bruce on Film
Dead Neon: The Many Faces of Lenny Bruce on Film

Lenny Bruce's depiction on film did not start or end with Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974). Through these ot...

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Love Left the Masquerade: Peter Medak's Cinema of Pretenders
Love Left the Masquerade: Peter Medak's Cinema of Pretenders

Peter Medak's films toy with notions of cosplay, masquerade, gamesmanship, and how power and permiss...

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Now, Irving Rapper
Now, Irving Rapper

Irving Rapper is, in many ways, Hollywood's forgotten man. After getting his start as a "dialogue di...

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William Wyler: Forty Takes Willy
William Wyler: Forty Takes Willy

Documentary on the life and career of famed director William Wyler. An Academy Award-winning directo...

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