Keith Bearden (born in

Middletown, Connecticut Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States, Located along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, it is south of Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated by English settler ...

) is an American screenwriter and director. Starting at age 9, he began acting extensively on stage, performing in productions at Wesleyan University and Yale University, and 10 years acting and then teaching at The Oddfellows Playhouse. While attending the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, he made a series of comic/surreal short films in

Super 8 Super 8 or Super Eight may refer to: Film * Super 8 film, a motion picture film format released in 1965 * Super 8 film camera, a motion picture camera used to film Super 8mm motion picture format * ''Super 8'' (2011 film), a science-fiction fi ...

and 16mm film. He currently resides in New York.

Career

Journalism

Bearden wrote extensively on film and filmmakers for magazines such as Movie Maker,

Fangoria ''Fangoria'' is an internationally distributed American horror film fan magazine, in publication since 1979. It is published four times a year by Fangoria Publishing, LLC and is edited by Phil Nobile Jr. The magazine was originally released i ...

, The Seattle Weekly, Time Out NY, Slant, Psychotronic Video and The Stranger. During this time he interviewed actors and directors including Russ Meyer, John Sayles, Jackie Chan, Charles Durning,

Paul Schrader Paul Joseph Schrader (; born July 22, 1946) is an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. He first received widespread recognition through his screenplay for Martin Scorsese's ''Taxi Driver'' (1976). He later continued his collabo ...

, John G. Avildsen, Udo Kier, Werner Herzog, Kevin Smith,

Paul Morrissey Paul Morrissey (born February 23, 1938) is an American film director, best known for his association with Andy Warhol. He was also director of the first film in which a transgender actress, Holly Woodlawn, starred as a girlfriend of the main cha ...

and

Dario Argento Dario Argento (; born 7 September 1940) is an Italian film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and film critic, critic. His influential work in the horror film, horror genre during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in the subgenre known as ...

Films

Co-written with Joel Haskard and made with Brooklyn producers Brad Buckwalter and Sharon Eagan, The Raftman’s Razor was a 7 minute 16mm short “existentialist fable” concerning two small town boys obsessed with a comic book superhero that essentially does nothing. It had its US premiere at the 2005

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

and went on to win awards at Montreal Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand, SxSW, Seattle International Film Festival and RES Fest. It was added to the permanent film collection of the Museum of Modern Art in 2009. Written and filmed as Miss January, but with a title change due to resistance from Playboy Enterprises, Meet Monica Velour premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and given a four city theatrical release in April 2011 by Anchor Bay Entertainment. Starring Dustin Ingram, Kim Cattrall and Brian Dennehy, the film was signaled out by many critics as giving Cattrall the best film performance of her nearly 30 year career. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray by Sony Entertainment worldwide. Despite some very positive reviews, Bearden noted that he did not have final music, edit, or script control in the DVD Director’s Commentary, calling it “almost my movie.” His 2nd feature film " Antarctica" starring

Chloe Levine Chloe (; ), also spelled Chloë, Chlöe, or Chloé, is a feminine name meaning "blooming" or "fertility" in Greek. The name ultimately derives, through Greek, from the Proto-Indo-European root ', which relates to the colors yellow and green. T ...

and Kimie Muroya was called "a surrealistic fable about growing up in America," premiered at the Raindance Film Festival in November 2020 and was released on

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and

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weeks after.

Awards

He is the recipient of Showtime’s Tony Cox Award for Screenwriting, a NYFA Fellow in Screenwriting, a two-time winner of the Jerome Foundation Film and Video Grant, and received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in Filmmaking in 2008.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bearden, Keith Year of birth missing (living people) American male screenwriters People from Middletown, Connecticut Evergreen State College alumni Living people Film directors from Connecticut Screenwriters from Connecticut