Radical Directing Lecture Series

Terry Zwigoff is an American film director and screenwriter who began his career making documentary films. Louie Bluie (1985), about an obscure Blues musician, was his first film. It was followed by another documentary, Crumb (1995), about underground comics figure Robert Crumb, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the DGA Award, along with every film critic's award that year including the New York Film Critic's Award, the National Society of Film Critics Award, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Award. The film's failure to receive an Oscar nomination, and the subsequent outcry from this omission, led to the Academy Awards changing the way its members voted for Documentary Film. Crumb wound up on over 150 Top Ten lists for 1995 and was called the best film of the year by many critics.

Ghost World (2001), based on the comic book by Daniel Clowes, was Zwigoff's first fiction film. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay along with co-writer Clowes. USA Today and the Washington Post called it the best film of the year, and it wound up on over 150 Top Ten lists. This was followed by Bad Santa (2003), whose star, Billy Bob Thornton, was nominated for a Golden Globe award. Zwigoff's last film, Art School Confidential (2005), starred John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, and Angelica Huston.

Photograph: Suzanne Hanover

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Organized to complement a new course taught by Film Department Chair Lynn Hershman Leeson for SFAI’s MFA program in Film, the Radical Directing Lecture Series emphasizes techniques and styles that veer from traditional narratives, as well as the conceptual frameworks directors use to cinematically articulate characters, plot, subtext, tension, and drama.