Mark Rappaport

From the ground-breaking director of ROCK HUDSON'S HOME MOVIES, Mark Rappaport takes us on a hilarious and provocative romp through the hidden and not-so-hidden gay undercurrents of Hollywood's Golden Years. Dan Butler acts as tour guide as he uncovers (despite efforts to launder American cinema of even the faintest traces of gay influences) Hollywood's squeamish fascination with gay eroticism and camp. Through the use of ingenious film Filmclips,...

In Hollywood's studio system, sets and equipment are used over and over again. Mark Rappaport shows not only opera boxes and stage rooms, which seem to be part of the permanent décor in MGM backstage musicals, but also curious connections such as a Spanish wall with orientalist ornamentation that appears in various films or the famous portrait painting by Gene Tierney in Laura, which surprisingly can be seen again in On the Riviera.

In this short film, Mark Rappaport begins musing on "the movies" and then quickly turns to the subject of "his movies" in this raffish introduction to his work up to the late-1970s.. Hiding behind a beard, sunglasses and a fedora, he offers fleeting insight into his means (credit cards) and methods ("a kind of mix-and-match theory of creating"). But mostly, he presents Filmclips from films few broadcast viewers have heard of -- let alone seen -- including...

Mark Rappaport completed his concise portrait of the legendary John Garfield in 2002, comprised (like much of his filmed essays) from existing film footage of the actor. Exceptionally engaging, Rappaport's extraordinary short contains more insightful observations of its subject than many feature-length biographical documentaries

Mark Rappaport's first film commences with Gerald Mur "studying the cinema" in the form of a blow-up glamor shot of Garbo. Then "the cinema" studies Gerald (from numerous angles) followed by a standoff as filmmaker and subject circle one another, dueling with cameras to determine who's watcher and who's watched.. Gerald's philosophical soundtrack musings ("People don't ask for beauty, they'll settle for less ugliness," "To live together destroys integrity")...

Debra Paget was a contract player for 20th-Century Fox, whom they groomed and coached for stardom. But she never quite caught on. Maybe the movies weren't interesting enough. Or maybe she didn't stand out from the rest of the pack. Or the studio didn't take enough care in shaping her image.. She had a ten-year run during the 1950s as an above-the-title star, but left it all at the age of 29, never to return to the screen. A reconsideration of her...

Although LOCAL COLOR is usually credited as being a minimalist film through its foregoing of complicated set design, director Mark Rappaport has intentionally conducted a feeling of excess in its textual elements. A shifting interior monologue among the cast of eight complicates our perspective of how this film is meant to be felt: without a form of protagonist, we are meant to reevaluate all of the characters' actions when their intentions are laid...

This film concerns legendary director Max Ophuls, and two of his favorite actors, James Mason, and Danielle Darrieux. Mason and Darrieux were each in several Ophuls projects but were never together in an Ophuls movie, although they should have been. What might that movie have been like? It's anybody's guess- but cinephiles can dream, can't they? This short film is somewhere between a historical essay and a speculative one.

A documentary about the career and eventual death from AIDS of actor Rock Hudson.. Rock Hudson's Home Movies is a compilation of privileged moments from various Hudson vehicles that, in one way or another, confirm or deny (and thus serve to reconfirm) the actor's necessarily concealed homosexuality.. "It was all up there," says Rock Hudson (Eric Farr) at the start of this rule-breaking, dizzying assortment of Filmclips from Rock Hudson's Hollywood...

An experimental drama that spins the tale of a woman, her sister, and the man who completes the triangle. Told through such fertile sources as grand opera, classical painting, and Victorian melodrama.. Winner of the Sutherland Trophy at the British Film Institute Awards.