Director
John Gianvito
70 years · Staten Island, New York, USA · 14 films
John Gianvito is an independent film director based in Boston, where he also holds an Associate Professorship in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College. He has taught at numerous major universities in New England and currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Robert Flaherty International Film Seminar. His extensive curatorial work also includes a five-year appointment as Film Programmer at the Harvard Film Archive. He made his debut as a director in 1978 with his short film The Direct Approach and rose to prominence with the subsequent feature The Flower of Pain (1983), a semi-autobiographical film about an adolescent relationship structured as a series of fragments, or “shards of memory” in Gianvito’s words. Commenting on the film to the Viennale, Gianvito described his attempt at “stripping away as much personal anecdotal material as possible, and concentrating on uncovering within each scene the disruptions, the unconscious and conscious mistakes.” Most recently, Gianvito has made Vapor Trail (Clark) which had its world premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2010. That same year, his documentary Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (2007), inspired by Howard Zinn’s famous tome A People’s History of the United States, was named one of the fifty greatest documentaries of all time by Time Out New York. For his extraordinary and unique contributions to cinema, Gianvito received the French honorary title of Knight in the Order of Art and Letters in 2001. – Wen Zhuang
Coming next
Best known for
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind
2008 · Director, Cinematography
On DocAlliance Films
The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein
2001 · Mr. Blacksmith, Writer
Far from Afghanistan
2012 · Director, Editor
On DocAlliance Films
Vapor Trail (Clark)
2010 · Director
On DocAlliance Films
Wake (Subic)
2015 · Director
On DocAlliance Films
Her Socialist Smile
2020 · Editor, Director
On DocAlliance Films
Filmography 13
Fugue
2023 · Director
On DocAlliance Films
The Grave's Sky
2023 · Director
On DocAlliance Films
Her Socialist Smile
2020 · Editor, Director
On DocAlliance Films
Wake (Subic)
2015 · Director
On DocAlliance Films
Far from Afghanistan
2012 · Director, Editor
On DocAlliance Films
My Heart Swims in Blood
2011 · Director
Vapor Trail (Clark)
2010 · Director
On DocAlliance Films
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind
2008 · Director, Cinematography
On DocAlliance Films
Puncture Wounds (September 11)
2008 · Writer, Director
The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein
2001 · Mr. Blacksmith, Writer
What Nobody Saw
1990 · Director
Address Unknown
1986 · Director
The Flower of Pain
1983 · Actor, Director