Series

Alex Ross Perry: Willing to Risk Everything

Cahiers du Cinéma critic Stéphane Delorme wrote that filmmaker, actor, and writer Alex Ross Perry’s films “remind us of a New York independent cinema that we loved [...] and that seemed to no longer exist.” Recalling cinema of the past but always reaching for new possibilities of the art form, Perry’s work belies emulation through experimentation and a sense of ‘working through’ psychological fears, anxieties of self and interpersonal relationships, while being relentlessly honest in considering the follies of humanity, big or small. Cynical, quick-witted, boastfully funny, attentive to the machinations of cinema, self-propelled, and willing to risk it all to get closer to some form of truth, Perry’s oeuvre stands outside the typical indie-fare and is among the most exciting work in American 21st-century narrative filmmaking.

The Brooklyn-based independent filmmaker has been working since his directorial debut in 2009, completing five feature films, acting in numerous independent projects, and writing scripts for others, including the upcoming live-action Disney adaptation of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. He is an alumnus of Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where he teaches directing in the graduate film program, and worked at the legendary Kim’s Video in Manhattan.