Benh Zeitlin

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Benh Zeitlin at the presentation of Beasts of the Southern Wild at the American Film Festival in Deauville (2012)

Benh Zeitlin (born October 14, 1982 in Queens , New York ) is an American filmmaker. The director , screenwriter and film composer , who used to work as a cameraman and film editor on his works, is a member of the independent film collective "Court 13" in New Orleans . He became famous for his films Glory at Sea (2008) and Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), which are set in southern Louisiana . The latter work, his feature film debut, earned him the main prize at the Sundance Film Festival and four Oscar nominations.

Life

Childhood, education and foundation of "Court 13"

Benh Zeitlin is the son of two folklorists who both studied at the University of Pennsylvania . His father Steve Zeitlin worked for the Smithsonian Institution and in 1986 was the founding director of the non-profit organization "City Lore", the New York Center for Urban Culture. His mother, Amanda Dargan, worked with her husband on the “City Play” project, a photographic essay that dealt with the lives of children in the streets of New York, and leads the “City Lore” educational program. Benh Zeitlin grew up with his sister Eliza in Westchester County , New York . As a child, his parents often took him to Coney Island , among other places , where he met a wide variety of personalities ( “My heroes are the wild, eccentric, socially weaker people who shaped my life as a child. I spent a lot of time in the Coney Island freak show with men with no arms or legs who could roll cigarettes [...] I think that was probably the biggest influence. " )

Zeitlin studied at the private university Wesleyan in Connecticut trays film studies and sociology . His first short film, the nine-minute Egg, was made during his studies . The surrealistic processing of the Moby Dick fabric, which Zeitlin realized predominantly using the stop-motion technique, earned him a first prize in the spring of 2005 at the California film festival in San José . In 2004 Zeitlin founded the independent film collective Court 13 together with friends from university , to which he has belonged ever since. It was named after a squash hall on the university campus, which the filmmakers used as a recording room for their short films. The group describes itself as a " grassroots movement " and an "independent film-making army" of artists and animators whose "great stories from minimal parts" are about real groups or people from the fringes of society.

After completing his studies in 2004, Zeitlin worked in different professions and traveled around the world, including Europe. He had planned to shoot a new short film project on a Greek island, but this failed, as well as working with the well-known filmmaker Jan Švankmajer in the Czech Republic . Zeitlin was one of his role models alongside Terrence Malick , John Cassavetes and Emir Kusturica (Kusturica's award-winning film Underground inspired Zeitlin to become a filmmaker himself). Zeitlin said he was living homeless in Prague when he heard the news of the destruction in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina in late August 2005 . Zeitlin had visited the city as a child and decided to turn the story of his next short film against the background of the devastating storm catastrophe in New Orleans. He previously made the short film The Origins of Electricity (2006), with two inquisitive lightbulbs as the main actors. The stop-motion film was made as part of the $ 99 Special program of the Slamdance Film Festival , which planned to make a film within 99 days on a budget of less than 99 US dollars.

Success with "Glory at Sea" and "Beasts of the Southern Wild"

In 2006 Zeitlin moved to Louisiana , where the 25-minute short film Glory at Sea was made, on which he worked as a director, screenwriter and alongside Dave Romer as a film composer. The US $ 100,000 fantasy production depicts how a motley group of survivors assemble a boat from found remains on the streets and set sail, hoping to find their lover at the bottom of the sea. Glory at Sea , told from the perspective of a drowned African American girl, premiered at the South by Southwest Texas film festival in early March 2008 . Zeitlin himself was unable to attend the premiere after being involved in a serious traffic accident in which he broke his hip and pelvis and sprained both ankles. The $ 80,000 cost of his medical treatment was funded with the help of professional colleagues, as Zeitlin had no health insurance. Meanwhile, Glory at Sea won a number of US festival awards. The New York Times praised Zeitlin's directorial work, which they thought stood out from the masses of productions about Hurricane Katrina. The film shifts the tragedy into the realm of myth and reminds of the New Orleans solemn rituals as it used to be.

Zeitlin in Berlin (2012)

Zeitlin achieved his international breakthrough as a filmmaker in 2012 with his feature film debut Beasts of the Southern Wild , for which he again created the film music together with Dave Romer. The fantasy drama with amateur actors tells of a nature-loving Afro-American girl who grows up with her seriously ill father in the remote swampland of Louisiana and is confronted with an approaching storm. The screenplay was originally based on the play Juicy and Delicious by author friend Lucy Alibar , which both rewritten as part of the Sundance Film Institute's script workshop and which brought them the 2010 “ NHK Award” at the Sundance Film Festival . The $ 1.3 million production, funded by various independent sources, which Zeitlin described not as a sequel but as "a kind of continuation" to Glory at Sea , premiered in late January 2012 in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Beasts of the Southern Wild won the grand prize for best feature film. The US critic Manohla Dargis praised the film as one of the best to be shown at the Sundance Film Festival in two decades. It is a "magical, realistic fable" and a "hero's journey, playing in a wonderfully mythologized part of southern Louisiana [...]" . Zeitlin's film won other awards at international festivals, including the Caméra d'Or for best debut film at the 65th Cannes International Film Festival in May 2012. In 2013, Beasts of the Southern Wild was nominated for four Oscars , including Zeitlin himself as best director and together with Lucy Alibar for the best adapted screenplay.

Benh Zeitlin lives with other members of the Court 13 film collective in a shared apartment in Bywater, New Orleans. His sister Eliza also belongs to the group as a set designer , whom he described as the "visual head" behind the Court 13 productions.

Filmography

Awards

Web links

Commons : Benh Zeitlin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ealy, Charles: Girl grapples with nature in folklore-infused 'Beasts' . In: Austin American-Statesman, July 8, 2012, p. D01.
  2. ↑ Arons, Rachel: A Mythical Bayou's All-Too-Real Peril . In: The New York Times, June 10, 2012, p. 14.
  3. ↑ a b c 'Beasting it' with Benh Zeitlin . In: Toronto Star , July 13, 2012, p. E6.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Horn, John: Filming on the edge . In: Los Angeles Times , June 17, 2012, Part D, p. 1.
  5. ↑ De La Vina, Mark; Newman, Bruce: Denmark's 'Villa Paranoia' Takes Top Prize At Cinequest . In: San José Mercury News, March 17, 2005, p. 3E.
  6. ↑ a b Schneller, Johanna: Wild Things . In: The Globe and Mail , July 13, 2012, p. R1.
  7. ↑ description in court13.com (accessed on 2 September 2012).
  8. ↑ a b Dargis, Manohla : At a Subtler Sundance, One Film Sparkles: Amazing Child, Typical Grown-Ups . In: The New York Times , Jan. 28, 2012, Section C, p. 1.
  9. ↑ a b Powers, John (with additions by Valerie Steiker): Wild at Heart . In: Vogue 202 (July 2012), No. 7, p. 68.
  10. ^ Snyder, S. James: Rooftop Films Raises ... Itself . In: The New York Sun, June 2, 2008, p. 13.
  11. ^ Lim, Dennis: The Angry Flood And the Stories In Its Wake . In: The New York Times, August 17, 2008, p. 7.
  12. ↑ Denby, David: Going South . In: The New Yorker 88 (July 23, 2012), No. 21, p. 80.
  13. ↑ Pond, Steve: Benh Zeitlin on 'Beasts of the Southern Wild': 'We Want to Create New Myths' at thewrap.com, June 26, 2012 (accessed September 2, 2012).
personal data
SURNAME Zeitlin, Benh
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zeitlin, Ben
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1982
PLACE OF BIRTH Queens , New York