BIO&PRESS
JON REISS Named one of “10 Digital Directors to Watch” by Daily Variety, Jon Reiss is a critically acclaimed, award winning filmmaker who has produced and directed three feature films, Better Living Through Circuitry, Cleopatra’s Second Husband and most recently Bomb It, an in depth look at the explosion of graffiti culture throughout the world and the resulting battle over public space. Reiss created Hybrid Cinema to release Bomb It himself in the United States. He is writing a series of articles for Filmmaker Magazine discussing his experience creating a multi faceted strategy utilizing theaters, festivals, museums to screen the film in addition to pursuing alternative DVD distribution models to work in conjunction with the film’ release by Docurama/New Video.
Jon has taught both film directing and production for the last 10 years most recently at the California Institute for the Arts where he created the class “Reel World Survival Skills: Everything I Wish I Had Been Taught in Film School.” This course covers the practical aspects of surviving as an independent writer/producer/director in today’s economy from finding a job, pitching and script development, to financing and new models of distribution.
As an award-winning music video director, Reiss’s early credits also include four hour-long documentaries concerning the notorious performance group Survival Research Laboratories. Reiss got his start in DIY filmmaking and distribution at Target Video, a San Francisco based alternative video company where he covered much of the West Coast punk explosion and developed screening tours for those documentaries throughout Europe and the United States. For more information go to www.jonreiss.com. Jon can be contacted at jon@jonreiss.com
