John ZornFilmography

Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Synopsis: Through most of the 20th Century, the American clothing industry was based in New York City, and in many respects the business reflected the growth and evolution of the nation. As immigrants from Europe made their way into New York via Ellis Island, a large number of them found work in the city's Read More

Jack Smith & The Destruction of Atlantis

Actors: Ari Roussimoff, Andrew Sarris, Ela Troyano, Billy Name, Agosto Machado

Synopsis: The underground art of renegade performance artist, photographer, and filmmaker Jack Smith is explored through the images he created and the words of those who knew him best in filmmaker Mary Jordan's tribute to the man believed to have inspired some of Andy Warhol's most iconic works. A virulent Read More

Notes on Marie Menken

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Marie Menken, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Alfred Leslie, Joseph J. Menkevich

Synopsis: Marie Menken was an artist and experimental filmmaker who was a contemporary and confidante to many noted auteurs of the '60s, including Kenneth Anger (he helped her shoot her film Arabesque for Kenneth Anger, while she appeared in Scorpio Rising), Stan Brakhage (he was an outspoken supporter of Read More

Workingman's Death

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Synopsis: In this film showcasing six of the most dangerous jobs on the planet, Mega Cities director Michael Glawogger travels the globe to turn his lens on the men who labor in these deadly but necessary jobs day after grueling day. Structured in six chapters that take the viewer everywhere from the Read More

The Treatment

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Christopher Eigeman, Famke Janssen, Ian Holm, Harris Yulin, Stephanie March

Synopsis: A man and a woman are faced with an unusual "fifth wheel" in their relationship -- his analyst -- in this offbeat independent comedy. Jake Singer (Chris Eigeman) is a schoolteacher working at a respected private school for boys. Jake recently parted ways with his longtime girlfriend and isn't Read More

American Combatant

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Charles Libin, Katherine Rose Chew, Ghasem Ebrahimian, Pouran Esrafily, Mindy Goldstein

Synopsis: Nearly 20 years after director Charles Libin stunned critics with his tale of revolutionaries attempting to stage a coup in the World Trade Center (The Distribution of Lead), he returns with a topical drama about crime, punishment, the passage of time, and the lasting impact of 9/11. While most Read More

Protocols of Zion

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Marc Levin, Al Levin, Shaun Walker, Frank Weltner, Abraham Foxman

Synopsis: Near the dawn of the 20th century, underlings of Czar Nicholas II created a book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to be the outline of a master plan created by powerful Jews determined to rule the world. First published in 1903, the essay was a hoax (and was revealed as Read More

Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Synopsis: Members of a family try to bridge their differences as they address different interpretations of Judaism in this emotionally powerful documentary. Menachem Daum is a devout Jew, as is his wife, Rivka Daum. During World War II, Rivka's father survived the Holocaust thanks to a Polish family who hid Read More

Invitation to a Suicide

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Synopsis: Writer-director Loren Marsh's black comedy Invitation to a Suicide - an official selection at the AFI Fest and HBO Comedy Festival - concerns the plight of Kaz Malek, a witless young man raised in a Polish enclave of Brooklyn. In a (very) misguided attempt to escape from his dead-end life as a Read More

Secret Lives: Hidden Children & Their Rescuers During WWII

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Synopsis: As an infant at the dawn of World War II, director Aviva Slesin was handed off by her Jewish parents to a Lithuanian family, for safekeeping from the Nazis. Now, Slesin seeks out the stories of other "adoptees" and their families in the documentary Secret Lives: Hidden Children & Their Rescuers Read More

In the Mirror of Maya Deren

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Stan Brakhage, Chao-Li Chi, Katherine Dunham, George Ferguson, Alexander Hammid

Synopsis: Maya Deren was one of the pioneering figures of avant-garde cinema in America and also a noted author, poet, anthropologist, and alternative cultural figure of the 1940s and 1950s. Born Eleanora Derenkovsky in 1917, her family fled Kiev in 1922 to avoid political and economic reprisals brought on Read More

Shaolin Ulysses: Kung Fu Monks in America

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Synopsis: Filmmakers Martha Burr and Chen Mei-jun join forces to explore the American immigrant experience from the unique vantage point of five émigré monks from China's legendary Shaolin Temple. From constructing new temples to performing under the bright lights in Las Vegas, these Zen masters and kung-fu Read More

A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: Twelve Stories About John Zorn

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: John Zorn

Synopsis: German filmmaker Claudia Heuermann's longtime admiration for New York-based postmodern musician/composer John Zorn is encapsulated in her non-linear 2002 documentary A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: Twelve Stories About John Zorn. Truly an all-inclusive music experimentalist, Zorn's repertoire Read More

Trembling Before G-d

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Synopsis: Director Sandi Simcha DuBowski makes his feature-length film debut with the documentary Trembling Before G-d, a look at gays and lesbians in Hasidic and Orthodox Judaism. Made over several years in New York, California, Israel, Britain, and Florida, the film follows the lives of several people Read More

Zuflucht In Shanghai

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Freddie Fields

Synopsis: Joan Grossman directs this compelling documentary about World War II era Jews who fled Nazi pogroms to Shanghai, which was one of the few places on earth that allowed them to enter without special quotas or entry visas. Renowned avant-garde jazz musician John Zorn scores the work. ~ Jonathan Crow Read More

Sabbath in Paradise

Synopsis: The Radical Jewish Culture movement flowered in the East Village of lower Manhattan during the early '90s, and embodied a successful attempt to link Jewish work in the creative arts (such as music, painting and sculpture) with extreme leftwing social activism. With her 1997 documentary Sabbath in Read More

Ecstasy No Namida: Chi-In

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Synopsis: Eschewing traditional narrative style for a series of 50 one-take scenes, this arty and ironic offering from Hiroyuki Oki borders on the pornographic with its frank and frequent depictions of various sex acts. But what elevates the film is the emotional distance Oki created when shooting the Read More

Zigrail

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Synopsis: This Canadian drama chronicles the adventures of a young man who journeys from Montreal to Istanbul to convince his pregnant girl friend to keep her baby and start a family with him. For most of his 27 years, Andre has been Peter Pan, spending his days carousing with his friends. Lately he and his Read More

Thieves Quartet

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Phillip Van Lear, Joe Guastaferro, Michele Cole, James "Ike" Eichling, Richard Henzel

Synopsis: Writer-director Joe Chappelle made his feature film debut with a cast of unknowns in this bizarre story that he concocted as a noir thriller. Bartender and ex-hippie Art Bledsoe (Joe Guastaferro) comes up with an idea for the perfect crime, and the idea intrigues three of his friends. Disgraced Read More

Die Kunst des Erinnerns - Simon Wiesenthal

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Synopsis: This German documentary chronicles the struggles of notorious Nazi-war criminal hunter Simon Wiesenthal , a man who survived the death camps and helped capture Adolf Eichmann. It was while helping Americans liberate other prisoners that the former Austrian architect found his life's calling. Read More

Sadistic City

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

The Golden Boat

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Michael Kirby, Jim Jarmusch

Synopsis: The Golden Boat, the first American production from internationally acclaimed director Raul Ruiz, is a dry-humored, surreal tale set in downtown Manhattan. Young writer Israel Williams (Federico Muchnik) encounters a wounded man on the street. Though he has been stabbed several times over, the man Read More

She Must Be Seeing Things

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Sheuila Dabney, Lois Weaver, Kyle de Camp, John Erdman

Synopsis: Whenever lesbian filmmaker Lois Weaver is hard at work on a new film, she has little time for a personal life. This bothers her lover, lawyer Sheila Dabney, to no end. While Weaver is away on a shoot, the jealous Dabney retreats to her distorted fantasy world. Gradually the two women learn to live Read More