Mark Rappaport

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Mark Rappaport is an American independent/underground film director who has been working sporadically since the early 1970s. His films are often marked by high camp, melodrama, deadpan humor, ennui, and a rather cavalier attitude towards copyright law and intellectual property, often using music, archival footage, and excerpts from Hollywood films without seeking permission.

Central to Rappaport's work is the relationship between the audience and media, particularly pop culture, which is his most recurring theme. An example of this is his first feature, Casual Relations, released in 1973. It is a bricolage of unrelated scenes, often announced by intertitles. One such title informs us that a character decided she would spend all day watching television. The scene that unfolds, approximately seven minutes in length, features just that: the character, in one continuous shot, watching television as the audio from three Hollywood films is heard. There is very little movement in the frame. Then the scene ends and the film moves on to the next scene.

A later shot holds on a car radio for nearly the entirety of the Rolling Stones song Under My Thumb. The Rolling Stones tend to protect their catalog rather litigiously but have never come after Rappaport; since he is an underground filmmaker, he seems to fly under their radar. On the other hand, that film was made 30 years ago, and he has gone on to make eight subsequent features.

Rappaport has long been overlooked by many critics and scholars, with Roger Ebert, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Ray Carney, J. Hoberman, Dave Kehr, and Stuart Klawans being notable exceptions. Rappaport has had (comparatively) greater success with his last three features, all made in the 1990s: Rock Hudson's Home Movies, From the Journals of Jean Seberg, and The Silver Screen/Color Me Lavender. His films have been shown at countless film festivals and on European and PBS television, and he has won many awards and grants.

• Mark Rappaport at the Internet Movie Database