University Press of Kentucky Screen Classics Series is releasing Daniel Kremer's book Sidney J. Furie: Life and Films on November 5, 2015. Award-winning biographer Patrick McGilligan is the series editor at Screen Classics, and the Foreword of the book was written by Piers Handling, head of the Toronto International Film Festival.  Learn more about the book here and pre-order it on Amazon.com here. The same press also published Nick Dawson's Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel and Marilyn Ann Moss's Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director.  Their recent releases include Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical, by Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo, and Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance, by Brent Phillips. Kremer's book, written and researched with the collaboration and cooperation of Sidney J. Furie himself, details the life of the venerable director of The Ipcress File, The Leather Boys, Lady Sings the Blues, The Appaloosa, Little Fauss and Big Halsy, The Boys in Company C, The Entity, Iron Eagle, and many others.  The book features interviews with Michael Caine, Rita Tushingham, R. Lee Ermey, Billy Dee Williams, Peter O'Toole, and many others.  A full-length biographical documentary film, Sidney J. Furie: Fire Up the Carousel!, is also in production as the veteran director steps into making one last personal film on a shoestring budget in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.  Stay tuned for further updates!

"How wonderful that there is finally a book about Sidney Furie, one of the best directors in the whole of my career . . . and one of my greatest friends. I wouldn't have had a career without him!" ―Michael Caine

"One hell of a book on one hell of a director, with one hell of a career! I originally wanted to make The Godfather with him but wound up working with him on two other pictures―and had about as good a time as I ever had on a movie set. Sidney J. Furie is one of the favorite directors of my career, and now, finally, there is a book to tell his story. He has survived fifty years as a filmmaker on grit, determination, and genius . . . especially genius!" ―Albert S. Ruddy, producer of The Godfather, The Longest Yard, and Million Dollar Baby

Daniel Kremer's new film, Raise Your Kids on Seltzer, will be released in August 2015. The film is about a middle-aged married couple, Terry and Tessa, who live in the Bay Area. They are retired "exit counselors," i.e. professionals contracted by families to kidnap people away from dangerous cults for "deprogramming" at a secure location. Terry and Tessa's cryptic motto during their often verbally and physically abusive deprogramming process: "Raise Your Kids on Seltzer, Bubble per Bubble!" For the last fifteen years, to make ends meet in an age when cults have become less prevalent, they have produced stylish, unintentionally humorous corporate media. When Terry and Tessa are suddenly called back into their old business, they realize they are rusty, and are hereby doing more harm to their new subject than good. Their unusual marital relationship, itself built on a number of strange domestic rituals, soon begins to unfurl...and reconstitute itself in a way that they did not expect. Stay tuned!
 

Daniel Kremer and Deniz Demirer are hard at work finishing the final edit of their feature-length film Ezer Kenegdo, starring themselves and featuring Kris Caltagirone, Rob Nilsson and Josh Safdie. A first trailer was released to the public in June 2013. Lensed primarily in San Francisco with additional locations in Brooklyn, New York, Ezer Kenegdo tells the story of a Chabad Lubavitcher Chassid just returned from a time of having gone "off the derech" (i.e. leaving the community in which he was raised) who travels to the Bay Area to visit his Polish-born Catholic friend so they can get a meeting with a controversial art world iconoclast who is about to destroy a lifetime's worth of his own artwork. Frictions develop between the two friends as they await their audience with the mad genius.

Now available from ConFluence-Film: In the Womb of the Caudron is an essay-style documentary film by Daniel Kremer and William Cully Allen, Ph.D, a philosopher of South Asian religions.  The film takes you inside one of the most sacred, ancient and enduring religious rituals in the world. The karaha is a relatively obscure agricultural ritual performed in remote rural India by low-caste priests in concert with high-caste brahmins, dramatizing a shifting and sharing of powers. The ritual is a fusion of caste cultures, memorializing the identity-defining moment when the low caste Yadav family rejected the worship of high caste Indra, in favor of the low caste Krishna, the cow herding incarnation of Vishnu. The viewer is bombarded with a veritable lollapalooza of sights and sounds from the ritual itself -- a ritual that has been legally banned throughout India.

Daniel Kremer and San Francisco filmmaker Deniz Demirer (Nocturnal Jake, American Mongrel) have just wrapped principal photography on a film they co-directed in the Bay Area.  The film is titled Ezer Kenegdo, and stars the two directors, featuring indie filmmaking legend Rob Nilsson (Signal 7, Northern Lights), Kris Caltagirone (American Mongrel), Penny Werner, local filmmaker Jeff Kao and Joshua Safdie (director of the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award-winner Daddy Longlegs) in supporting roles.  The film tells the story of Yisroel “Izzy” Jonigkeyt, a Brooklyn Lubavitcher Chassid on the threshold of marriage, who travels to San Francisco to visit Marek Wisniewski, a Polish Catholic born in Warsaw.  They intend to collaborate on a project that examines why art world iconoclast Harry Kierk intends to destroy his entire life’s work.  As the visit progresses, Izzy and Marek discover for the first time that historical and cultural baggage is impinging on their curious friendship, which grows more and more tremulous with each passing day.  The filmmakers hope to have the film ready for a late 2013/early 2014 release.  Stay tuned!

A film that Daniel Kremer shot in 2006 and 2007 is being re-released to the VOD market.  It is called Sophisticated Acquaintance.  The film is a more fragmentary form of do-it-yourself cinema, mixing elements of narrative, experimental and documentary in an unlikely but strangely pleasing stew, the film is the portrait of a tormented individual whose short life and long death were affected by a great many factors. It is a film about the creative process, it is the heartbreaking depiction of a rigid father-son relationship… and,  most of all, it is a film about individuality.  Filmmaker John Gross plays Klaus Mann, a stylized and fictionalized version on the real writer of the same name.  Klaus lives in the shadow of his father, the successful intellectual, novelist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann (Ernst Hohmann).  Featuring a soundtrack of artists from the fiercely independent Constellation Records label, Sophisticated Acquaintance is a film that is sure to intrigue, vex, exhilarate and challenge.

ConFluence-Film cinematographer Aaron Hollander, who shot The Idiotmaker's Gravity Tour and A Trip to Swadades, is currently editing a film he wrote and directed.  Tandem, Brown and Upside Down is Hollander's first return to the director's chair since his 2006 short film Fenster.  The new film, which was shot in New York City and Philadelphia, stars Jacob Green (Ryan Gosling's younger self in 2001's The Believer), Alanna Blair (A Simple Game of Catch, Frogtown), Ian Verdun (the TV series "Hawthorne"), filmmaker Miranda Hill and theater actor Patrick Barrett.  The film was screened in rough cut form to a packed house on September 9, 2012 at Philadelphia International House Theater.  It will be ready for ConFluence-Film/Mt. Carmel Films release by the end of this year.  Stay tuned for more details!

Glorious news for Daniel Kremer's feature-length drama The Idiotmaker's Gravity Tour: The film has been picked up for distribution on Fandor! It is now available to download and view here. Soon after, the film will be available to download on Netflix. Also, one-time Cannes Film Festival Camera D'Or winner and Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize-winner Rob Nilsson has given us a promotional quote:

“The Idiotmaker’s Gravity Tour is a no-budget, do-it-yourself excursion to India, from a filmmaker of considerable enterprise and admirable aplomb. Actor William Cully Allen has a very dynamic face -- there is a piquant, tragic quality there that makes one understand and gravitate towards him and his mission. The beautiful cinematography and the compelling story guarantee a 'gravity tour' to the East that you won’t regret taking.”

Daniel Kremer's New Film A Simple Game of Catch

Daniel Kremer will be holding a private premiere for friends, family, cast and crew for his new feature-length fiction film A Simple Game of Catch on September 9 at 6:00 p.m at Philadelphia's International House. The film is an unusual little chamber drama which stars Alanna Blair (Kremer's The Idiotmaker's Gravity Tour, C. Andrew Hall's Frogtown and the award-winning webseries Pioneer One) as a young woman named Emily. She has recently changed her name to Chazz and has emigrated from Pittsburgh to New York City. She responds to a job ad involving housesitting for a parrot-owning Manhattanite going out of town, and must weather the internal backlash from the humiliating thing she decides to do while cooped up in this stranger's apartment, having unreciprocated conversations with the parrot all the while. She also eavesdrops on her employer's neighbors. The film was shot over a period of seven days, on HD. A trailer is forthcoming. Supporting cast includes Katya Quinn-Judge, William McKeever, Dave Coleman, Jacob Green, Hanshi Kaufman and Tango the Parrot.

Tangled Fringes: ConFluence-Film Releases the Title of Its Newest Documentary!

Filmmakers Daniel Kremer and Aaron Hollander (cinematographer of A Trip to Swadades and The Idiotmaker's Gravity Tour) are co-directing a feature-length documentary about the phenomenon of baalei teshuva (newly observant Orthodox Jews) and the kiruv (outreach) organizations that recruit and nurture them. This will be the first definitive feature-length documentary portrait of the baal teshuva phenomenon, examining the physical, mental and social evolution of the individual, and the considerable challenges such an individual faces. The piece will be thorough in exploring a movement that continues to grow and expand in size and energy — and is now, more than ever, flourishing. To see a full quality HD version of the teaser trailer, go here. More updates are coming soon!

Philly Broadcaster Reviews ConFluence-Film's Newest!

The August 18 premiere screenings of John Gross' The Wind Blows Where It Wishes and Daniel Kremer's The Idiotmaker's Gravity Tour at International House's Ibrahim Theater in Philadelphia were a fantastic success! Philly Broadcaster columnist Frank Cassella has published reviews of the two ConFluence-Film titles. To read the review, go here or click the above image.

Two All New Articles Promoting the August 18 ConFluence-Film Premieres!

The Philadelphia blog Around Philly just today published an article about the August 18 grand premiere of The Idiotmaker's Gravity Tour. Philly Broadcaster writer Frank Cassella has also written a second article, a follow-up to the first article published on June 13, interviews Idiotmaker director Daniel Kremer along with John Gross, the writer-director of The Wind Blows Where It Wishes.