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30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025

John Gianvito

No stranger to IFFR, John GIANVITO (USA) is a filmmaker and curator living in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also a Professor in the Department of Visual & Media Arts at Emerson College in Boston. His films include The Flower of Pain (1983), Address Unknown (1985) and The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (2001). In 2001 he received the French honorary title of Knight in the Order of Art and Letters. Vapor Trail (Clark) had its world premiere at IFFR in 2010. That same year, his documentary Profit Move and the Whispering Wind (2007) was named one of the 50 greatest documentaries of all time by Time Out (New York). Gianvito is the editor of the book Andrei Tarkovsky: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi).

Filmography

The Direct Approach (1978, short), The Flower of Pain (1983), Address Unknown (1985, co-dir), What Nobody Saw (1990, short), The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (2001), Puncture Wounds [September 11] (2002, short), Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (2007, short doc), Vapor Trail (Clark) (2010), Far From Afghanistan (2012, co-dir, doc), Wake (Subic) (2015, doc), Her Socialist Smile (2020), Fugue (2022, short), The Grave’s Sky (2022, short)

John Gianvito at IFFR

  • The Grave’s Sky

    Rotterdam regular John Gianvito with a sensitive, homebound film diary recorded in the pandemic years 2020-2022.

    • Short & Mid-length
  • Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind

    Filmed throughout the United States over a three-year period, this is an elegant, pensive film that chronicles the history of America’s progressive mo

    • Short: As Long As It Takes
  • Wake (Subic)

    Wake (Subic) forms, together with Vapor Trail (IFFR 2010), a monumental essay that investigates the context of the poisoning around former American ba

    • Deep Focus
    • Signatures
  • The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein

    Fiction and documentary rolled into one about the effects of the Gulf War on the inhabitants of a small American desert town. Committed, poetic and am

    • Desert of the real
  • Vapor Trail (Clark)

    An investigation into the ecological disaster caused by a US military base on the Philippines – and its victims, their world. A humble act of solidari

    • Signals - After Victory