Daniel Kremer

Filmmaker, film historian, biographer, and professional film archivist Daniel Kremer grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated Temple University's film program and now lives in San Francisco. In 2007, while living in Philadelphia, he directed his first feature Sophisticated Acquaintance (2007) and was presented with four Best Short Documentary prizes for Yarns to Be Spun on the Way to the Happy Home (2007), a personal essay film about having grown up with a severe stutter. His second feature A Trip to Swadades (2008), which was shot on black-and-white super-16mm film, won three Best Feature Film awards. Following that film's international festival tour (which included Rotterdam), he moved to New York City, where he lived for nearly seven years. At one point, he studied to be an Orthodox rabbi, but gave it up to continue pursuing film. In 2011, he completed his acclaimed follow-up feature, The Idiotmaker's Gravity Tour (2011). The film was lensed predominantly in India and is distributed on Fandor. Subsequent to that, he directed Raise Your Kids on Seltzer (2015), Ezer Kenegdo (2017), Overwhelm the Sky (2018), and Even Just (2020) in the San Francisco Bay Area, using independent filmmaking icon Rob Nilsson's regular cast and crew. The first two titles respectively feature cult-favorite actor Barry Newman (Vanishing Point, Petrocelli, The Limey) and Sundance Film Festival winner Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems, Good Time, Heaven Knows What). The critically lauded Overwhelm the Sky, distributed by Kino Lorber, was given special coverage for having been released in the classic epic "roadshow" format. Kremer has screened work at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Joseph Conrad Festival in Krakow, Poland, Maryland International Film Festival, San Francisco Independent Film Festival, Brussels International Film Festival, Glasgow Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Fantasporto Film Festival in Porto, Portugal, Rivers Edge International Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, and many other international venues. He is in pre-production on a new feature drama called Precious Wheels Above (2022), and is developing another, a musical based on the songs of departed Bay Area artist David Schickele. He has also edited many feature films for other directors, including one with Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope. His first book, about the life and career of filmmaker Sidney J. Furie (The Ipcress File, Lady Sings the Blues, The Boys in Company C, The Entity), was published by University Press of Kentucky's Screen Classics Series in November 2015. The book was written with Furie's collaboration, for a series edited by legendary biographer Patrick McGilligan. In conjunction with this book, he is also directing a full-length biographical documentary about Furie, entitled Sidney J. Furie: Fire Up the Carousel!. Kremer also found, restored, and preserved Furie's long-lost sophomore feature A Cool Sound from Hell (1959), one of the first narrative features made in English Canada. His second book, currently in editing at Oxford University Press, is the first to cover filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver (Hester Street, Chilly Scenes of Winter, Crossing Delancey). His third book, now being researched, will be the first to cover the life and career of independent cinema icon Henry Jaglom (Eating, Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, Tracks, Someone to Love, Festival in Cannes). With David Thomson and Tom Luddy, he is assisting in the editing of an anthology of Susan Sontag's writings on cinema. As a film scholar, he has provided dozens of DVD/Blu-Ray commentary tracks for Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Shout! Factory, AGFA, Scorpion Releasing, Code Red, Imprint, Vinegar Syndrome, and Cohen Media, as well as essays for Twilight Time special edition Blu-Ray releases. He has also published articles for Filmmaker Magazine, Talkhouse, Keyframe, CineSource Magazine, and other publications. He is represented by the legendary Georges Borchardt, the literary agent of both Samuel Beckett and Elie Wiesel. As a Trailers from Hell guru, he is listed alongside other gurus like Guillermo del Toro, Luca Guadagnino, Eli Roth, Joe Dante, Edgar Wright, John Landis, Roger Corman, John Sayles, and many others. In 2014, Kremer helped spearhead a feature-filmmaking collective in the Bay Area, with Deniz Demirer, Penny Werner, Jeff Kao, Josh Peterson, Aaron Hollander, and Kris Caltagirone.