Matthew Mishory | |
---|---|
Born |
Santa Monica,
California, U.S. | July 17, 1982
Alma mater | University of California |
Occupation |
Matthew Mishory is an American film director of Israeli descent. He has directed both narrative and documentary films and was named a "rising talent" by Variety Magazine in 2013. [1] His award-winning 2009 film, Delphinium, about Derek Jarman, was preserved by the British Film Institute in its National Film Archive. [2]
Mishory was born on July 17, 1982, in Santa Monica, California, and grew up in Los Angeles, California. He is a citizen of the United States and Israel. He studied film at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he received his Bachelor of Arts in 2004. [3] [4]
Mishory's 2009 short film, Delphinium, about the legendary English artist Derek Jarman, was screened at dozens of film festivals before being permanently installed in the British Film Institute's National Film Archive. [5] [2] The film was subsequently re-released in the UK by the BFI as part of the year-long Jarman 2014 celebration. [6] In 2017, it was presented by the Tate Britain Museum in London. [7] [8] The film's score was composed by Siouxsie and the Banshees co-founder Steven Severin. [9]
His feature film debut, the 35 mm black-and-white Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean, debuted at the Transilvania International Film Festival on June 10, 2012, and was released theatrically in the United States, the UK, and Germany, and received a Jury Prize at the 2012 Image+Nation Montreal Film Festival. [10] [11] Writing for Film International, Robert Kenneth Dator wrote, "Matthew Mishory has managed to capture an austere beauty of a kind little known by all but the likes of Baudelaire.” [12]
Mishory's second feature film, the documentary Absent, was filmed in remote rural Moldova. It concerns the village of Mărculeşti, site of a horrible atrocity in 1941 in which all of the village's Jews were massacred by the Romanian army. [13]
The film introduces the current residents of Mărculeşti, who seem to be unaware (or unwilling to discuss) what happened. [14] Mishory's own grandparents lived in the village, escaping to Israel just before the start of the Holocaust. [14]
In an interview with the online magazine Tablet, Mishory discussed the complex emotions of filming there: "The history of Mărculeşti and the Holocaust pose impossible intellectual and theological questions. All I can say is that my feelings about what happened in Mărculeşti are complicated. I remain a practicing Jew. And I also have serious doubts about human nature. I’m angry that people who live overlooking a killing field lie about their history. But I also have a lot of empathy for the current residents of the village and their difficult circumstances.” [15]
Mishory's third feature, Artur Schnabel: No Place of Exile, was made for the German-French television network Arte. [16] The film was shot in Switzerland, Italy, Vienna, and Berlin, utilizing unexpected textures (such as Super 8, drone footage, and back-projection) and the German actor Udo Samel to chart pianist/composer Artur Schnabel's course through the emotional and physical landscapes of the European 20th century. [17] In November 2018, the film was screened [18] at The Library of Congress in Washington D.C. In 2019 it was released on the classical music channel medici.tv. [19]
In March 2018, Mishory began filming Mosolov's Suitcase, the story of the Soviet avant-garde composer Alexander Mosolov, sent to the gulag by Joseph Stalin, with César Award-nominated actor Kirill Emelyanov in the title role. Over the course of five years, production was delayed numerous times due to a global pandemic and the outbreak of war. [20] In December 2023, Deadline Hollywood announced the casting of Lior Ashkenazi and the resumption of production on the film. [21] In the first of three intersecting plotlines, Ashkenazi plays a celebrated film director who "recounts his unconventional efforts to complete a film abandoned in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine". [22] Deadline further reported the completion of principal photography and the release of a teaser trailer in February 2024. [23]
In 2021, it was announced in Variety Magazine that Mishory would be directing the documentary Who Are the Marcuses? for Stone Canyon Entertainment and Rhino Films. [24] The film premiered at the 2022 Newport Beach Film Festival and 2023 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Film Threat reported that the film "offers a perspective on how philanthropy can make a change for the better, save a planet in crisis, and maybe even bring about lasting peace in the Middle East". [25] Guitarist David Broza composed and performed the film's score.
Mishory also directs commercials. In 2018, he directed the "Powerful Performance” campaign for the brand TCL, starring NBA All-Star Giannis Antetokounmpo. [26] [27] In 2020, he again directed Antetokounmpo, along with his brother, Thanasis, in the "Enjoy More" campaign. [28] He also directed a surf campaign with pro surfer Tia Blanco, filmed in Los Cabos, Mexico. [29]