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13 SOFIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
15.03. - 18:30,
Lucky Cinema - Plovdiv

Director:  Jim Jarmusch
Cinematography:  Robby Muller
Screenplay:  Jim Jarmusch
Producer:  Demetra J. MacBride
Music:  Neil Young
Cast:  Johnny Depp , Gary Farmer , Robert Mitchum , Lance Henriksen , Gabriel Byrne , John Hurt , Alfred Molina , Crispin Glover , Iggy Pop , Steve Buscemi , Billy Bob Thornton
Production:  JVC Entertainment/Newmarket Capital Group/Pandora Filmproduktion
Dead Man
Dead Man
Dead Man
USA , 1995, 120 min, black & white
Awards:  Cannes 1995 - "Competition" ; Award of the NYFC for best cinematography; EFA ’96 for best non-European film

It's going to be a tough sell in an era of impossible missions and improbable special effects, but Dead Man is a film of rare beauty and genuine insight. This art film in Western clothing marks a departure for director/writer Jim Jarmusch, the hipster auteur best known for quirky, coolly amusing character studies, from Stranger Than Paradise to Night On Earth. In a town called Machine, mild-mannered accountant Bill Blake turns outlaw after shooting a man in self-defense. Pursued by an unlikely team of gunslingers, he heads for the wilderness, finding a partner and spiritual guide in the person of a philosophical Indian called Nobody.
Dead Man is no conventional outlaw saga. Just beneath its burnished surface lies a visionary allegory of the soul's progress from physical death to spiritual transcendence, seasoned with references to the life and works of the poet William Blake. But the film's rather hefty agenda needn't scare off Jarmusch fans, nor must it alienate the inquiring moviegoers. A slow-paced but hypnotically absorbing movie, it's buoyed by Jarmusch's trademark off-key humor and embellished throughout by an electrifying instrumental score, courtesy of Neil Young. On the visual level, it's simply resplendent: Cinematographer Robby Muller works from an exceptionally rich black-and-white palette, and what he does for Jarmusch here is quite comparable to what Kazuo Miyagawa's camera did for Mizoguchi. And Dead Man even has star power, in the form of Depp, who gives further evidence of his gallant – to some, inexplicable – commitment to the offbeat.


Jacob Levich

Jim Jarmusch
With his trademark shock of white hair and ultra-cool rock star persona, Jim Jarmusch is the archetypal auteur of American independent film. Steadfastly resisting the sirens of Hollywood, Jarmusch has fashioned stylish, worldly, and thoroughly hip movies that have been the toast of the international film circuit.
Born on January 22, 1953, in Akron, OH, Jarmusch was the son of a former film critic for the Akron Beacon Journal. As a child, he spent much of his time watching B-movie triple features. After graduating from high school in 1971, he ended up in New York before venturing to Paris one summer on an exchange program. He loved the place so much that he stayed there for a year, soaking up French culture, literature, and particularly films, spending much of his time going to the cinématheque instead of to classes. At that time, the hallowed French New Wave movement was still a recent memory and such luminaries as François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Jean-Luc Godard were still regularly making movies. Upon his return to New York, Jarmusch transferred to Columbia University, where, though he eventually received a degree in English literature, his love of film continued to inspire him. With no film experience, he was accepted into New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and soon found himself a teaching assistant to legendary maverick filmmaker Nicholas Ray. Ray helped him get funding for his thesis project, Permanent Vacation (1980). Though the film was later released to critical acclaim, his professors were underwhelmed by his final project and Jarmusch never got a degree from N.Y.U.
The stamp of Jarmusch is his tendency to a gently absurdist, understated comedy, which affectionately punctures the cool, hip pretensions and delusions of his self-consciously laconic loners. The compositions are uncluttered, often static and oddly formal, stressing the essential solitude of characters seemingly obsessed with self-definition. The sparing dialogue, generally minimalist performances and a preference for long takes evoke lives plagued by problems of communication, misunderstanding, rootlessness and inertia. At the same time, Jarmusch’s elliptical, dedramatised, episodic narrative style is symptomatic of his restlessly experimental interest in the method and structure of cinematic storytelling. Crucially, however, this interest in formalism is balanced by subtle wit, the warmth he clearly feels for his characters and a bemused, intelligent interest in the unfamiliar backroads of American life (the underrated Dead Man was a decidedly different western), so that he remains one of the most accessible, original and influential of that country’s independent film-makers.
1980  Permanent Vacation
1984  Stranger Than Paradise
1986  Coffee and Cigarettes
1986  Down by Law
1989  Coffee and Cigarettes II
1989  Mystery Train
1991  Night on Earth
1993  Coffee and Cigarettes III
1995  Dead Man
1997  Year of the Horse
1999  Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
2002  Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet
2003  Coffee and Cigarettes
2005  Broken Flowers
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