I was born at the end of WWII--a true "war baby." Following my own military service, which included a tour of duty in Vietnam, I used the GI Bill to go to a film production school in New York City. I was immediately hired out of that schooling as production manager for a small NYC firm in 1968. By 1971, I had tired of the Big City life and moved to the Blue Ridge foothills of Virginia. Eventually, I went back to shool and completed a PhD in anthropology and archaeology and had a successful career as a scientist and professor at Virginia Commonwealth University...leaving the movie making to the experts.
In the first year or two of the 21st century, I decided to reclaim and renew my love of filmmaking, but now the world had changed. The world was going digital, and I decided to follow suit. No film, no Moviolas or editing tape or work prints or Nagra recorders would follow me into this brave new world. I would do it all with a little digital camcorder and Adobe Premiere Pro! After dabbling in documntary filmmaking, I eventually started making little personal "nanomovies" that were simply expressions of my creative urges. Not story-telling so much as simply playing with sound and image and motion.
The miraculous tools of digital technology have revolutionized and simplified every aspect of filmmaking, but, nonetheless, I missed the gritty essence of real film. In 2015 I decided to take a giant leap backwards. I went back to my New York City roots in the 60s and purchased a Bolex 16mm camera, but soon remembered that without a suite of editing tools and a local lab to get me daily rushes, I would need to scan my film and...well, bottom line is, I love 16mm but it can drive you to poverty if you take it on as a hobby. Soon I learned to switch to 8mm and Super 8. Before today's 2K, 4K and 5K digital scans, those old film formats never looked so good.
So now I am a dabbler in what I lilke to think of as "fine-art home movies." Blending the often shaky hand-held imagery of a septigenarian would-be Felini, with my homespun digital musical compositions, I experiment wth concepts, emotions, and a bit of mysticism. I don't take my works too seriously, and I don't expect anyone else to do so, either. That said, I enjoy making them, and I hope someone enjoys watching them. My recent projects include 4 Straight8 competition films (2017, 2018 and two for 2019).
Unique traits: Movie making is a team sport. I’ll help you make yours if you help me make mine.
The Lotus is a Flower Budget: $0 - $100K | Independent ⋄ Biography The Lotus is a Flower A dog-tired, stressed-out US soldier, on R&R leave from Vietnam in 1960s Singapore, seeks a measure of comfort from a mature Chinese prostitute who will change his life forever. Two people of different ages and different worlds spend the night in a motel room sitting crosslegged on the floor, among other things.