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.[1]
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.”[2] The next several years brought Mozart in Love (1975), Local Color (1977), the Max Ophuls-influenced The Scenic Route (1978), and Imposters (1979).[3]Roger Ebert called the film “a witty and mannered exercise in style and social observation.”[4] Rappaport’s last narrative feature was Chain Letters (1985).[5]
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.[8][9][10]
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).[11]
