Mark Rappaport

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American film director

title: "Mark Rappaport" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["living-people", "film-directors-from-new-york-city", "american-film-critics", "brooklyn-college-alumni", "american-experimental-filmmakers", "1942-births", "collage-filmmakers", "video-essayists"] description: "American film director" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rappaport" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American film director ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox person"]

Field	Value
name	Mark Rappaport
image	Mark Rappaport Viennale 2015.jpg
caption	Rappaport on 2015
birth_date
birth_place	New York City, New York, U.S.
alma_mater	Brooklyn College (BA)
occupation	Film director, film critic
years_active	1966–present
notable_works
::

Mark Rappaport (born January 15, 1942, in New York City, United States) is an American independent/underground film director and film critic, who has been working since the 1960s.

Biography

Born and raised in Brighton Beach, New York, Rappaport graduated from Brooklyn College in 1964 with a B.A. in literature. In 2005, he moved to Paris, France, where he resides and works.

Starting in 1966, Rappaport directed a number of short films and six low-budget features, all made independently with low budgets.

Rappaport’s first feature, Casual Relations (1974), was later described in The A.V. Club as “a formidable exercise in the narrative ambiguities that would dominate many of his films to come.” The next several years brought Mozart in Love (1975), Local Color (1977), the Max Ophuls-influenced The Scenic Route (1978), and Imposters (1979). Roger Ebert called the film “a witty and mannered exercise in style and social observation.” Rappaport’s last narrative feature was Chain Letters (1985).

In 1992, Rappaport began the second phase of his career, in which he moved from scripted narrative to the form of the video essay. The first of these was Rock Hudson's Home Movies, a documentary on Rock Hudson's homosexuality as seen through clips from his films. The same form was used for From the Journals of Jean Seberg (1995), in which actress Mary Beth Hurt spoke as Jean Seberg; and The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender (1997), narrated by Dan Butler. Because of this work, critic Matt Zoller Seitz called Rappaport "the father of the modern video essay."

Starting in 2014, Rappaport turned to short video essays on film history, chronicling the careers of actors (Anita Ekberg, Marcel Dalio, Debra Paget, Chris Olsen, Conrad Veidt, Will Geer) and specific directors (Douglas Sirk, Max Ophuls, Sergei Eisenstein, Jacques Tati and Robert Bresson).

In May 2012, Rappaport filed a lawsuit against professor Ray Carney for refusing to return digital masters of his movies which the filmmaker had previously entrusted to Carney to transport to Paris. The suit was later dropped due to rising legal costs, and Rappaport started an online petition demanding that Carney return the masters.

In 1994, Rappaport started contributing to the French film journal Trafic, created by Serge Daney two years earlier. Since then, he has published more than 40 pieces, and several collections, including The Moviegoer Who Knew Too Much (2013) and (F)au(x)tobiographies (2013).

Recognition

Rappaport has been noted by Roger Ebert, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Ray Carney, J. Hoberman, Dave Kehr, and Stuart Klawans.

Filmography

;Independent films (1966–1990)

1966 : Blue Frieze (short)
1966 : Mur 19 (short)
1967 : Friends (short)
1968 : Bay of Angels (short)
1968 : The Stairs (short)
1969 : Persepolis (short)
1970 : Chronicle (short)
1971 : Fluorescent (short)
1971 : Blue Streak (short)
1974 : Casual Relations
1975 : Mozart in Love
1977 : Local Color
1978 : The Scenic Route
1979 : Imposters
1980 : Mark Rappaport -- The TV Spin-off (short)
1985 : Chain Letters
1990 : Postcards (short) ;Found footage films (1992–2002)
1992 : Rock Hudson's Home Movies
1993 : Exterior Night (short)
1995 : From the Journals of Jean Seberg
1997 : The Silver Screen : Color Me Lavender
2002 : John Garfield (short) ;Video essays (2014–Present)
2014 : The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk (short)
2014 : Becoming Anita Ekberg (short)
2015 : I, Dalio (short)
2015 : Our Stars (short)
2015 : Max & James & Danielle... (short)
2015 : The Circle Closes (short)
2016 : Debra Paget, For Example (short)
2016 : Tati vs. Bresson : The Gag (short)
2016 : Chris Olsen - The Boy Who Cried (short)
2016 : Sergei / Sir Gay (short)
2017 : The Double Life of Paul Henreid (short)
2017 : The Empty Screen or The Metaphysics of Movies (short)
2017 : Private Screenings (short)
2018 : Will Geer - America's Grandpa (short)
2019 : Conrad Veidt - My Life
2019 : Anna/Nana/Nana/Anna (short)
2020 : L'Année dernière à Dachau (short)
2020 : The Stendhal Syndrome or My Dinner with Turhan Bey (short)
2021 : Two for the Opera Box (short)
2021 : Love in the Time of Corona (short)
2021 : Martin und Hans (short)
2022 : Rope's End (short)
2023 : The Marriage of Greta Garbo and Sergei Eisenstein (short)

References

Kruger, Barbara. (May 1985). "Mark Rappaport: COLLECTIVE FOR LIVING CINEMA".
"Casual Relations".
[https://siskelebert.org/?p=1678 Low-Budget, Independent Films, 1981 – Siskel and Ebert Movie Reviews]
Ebert, Roger. (January 24, 1981). "Declarations of independence: Before Sundance was Sundance".
Asch, Mark. (February 7, 2020). "The Complicated Personas of Mozart, Rock Hudson, and Jean Seberg".
Thomas, Kevin. (May 31, 1996). "'Jean Seberg' Gives Voice to a Short, Eventful Life".
Seitz, Matt Zoller. (January 29, 2016). "Medium For a Dead Person: Mark Rappaport Comes to Fandor".
Edgers, Geoff. (April 7, 2013). "BU caught in middle as filmmaker, professor feud". Boston Globe.
[https://www.indiewire.com/2013/04/the-strange-and-sad-saga-of-how-filmmaker-mark-rappaport-lost-his-movies-and-what-he-can-do-to-get-them-back-39582/ The Strange and Sad Saga of How Mark Rappaport Lost His Movies (And What He Can Do To Get Them Back). IndieWire]
[https://slate.com/culture/2012/10/mark-rappaport-versus-ray-carney-did-this-film-scholar-steal-an-indie-filmmakers-rare-works.html Mark Rappaport vs. Ray Carney - Slate.com]
"Mark Rappaport".
Ebert, Roger. (August 14, 2013). "The Scenic Route Movie Review (1978) | Roger Ebert". Rogerebert.suntimes.com.
"The Independent Vision: Snapshots of Mark Rappaport". People.bu.edu.
(September 20, 1983). ["Blog Archive » Mark Rappaport from FILM: THE FRONT LINE 1983]". JonathanRosenbaum.net.
[https://www.videodetective.com/movies/rock-hudsons-home-movies/843693 Rock Hudson's Home Movies Trailer (2003)-Video Detective]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I6xZZbb7aS0 Mark Rappaport – Rock Hudson's Home Movies (trailer) -REVOIRVIDEO on YouTube]
Van Gelder, Lawrence. (July 17, 1998). "FILM REVIEW; Glimpses of the Gay Life: A Hollywood Perspective". The New York Times.

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