Michael Oblowitz

Michael Oblowitz is a South African filmmaker.

Born in Cape Town, he is a Fine Arts and Philosophy graduate of the University of Cape Town and holds an M.A. in Film from Columbia University. He was involved in New York's No Wave Cinema subculture. His early fine arts short films have been shown in the Whitney Museum's No Wave Cinema Series, as part of a tribute to the innovative work of filmmakers and artists in Manhattan's Lower East Village.

His first feature, the avant-garde film noir King Blank (1983), starring Will Patton and Ron Vawter, was presented at numerous international film festivals. Oblowitz has collaborated on film and video projects with major New York artists including Joseph Kosuth, Vito Acconci, Lawrence Weiner, 'Joan Jonas' and Spalding Gray. His work has been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and the Walker Art Center, as well as Paris' Cinemateque and Beaubourg Museum.

His early films from the 1970s and early 1980s; X-Terminator, The Is/Land, Minus Zero and King Blank are in the permanent collection of the Museum Of Modern Art, New York City.

Oblowitz's other notable work is as a director of photography for Germany's avant-garde filmmaker, 'Rosa Von Praunheim'; four short films that garnered various film festival awards; documentaries on South Africa's prison island, The Is/Land, which won the Melbourne Film Festival in 1982 and a documentary on blues guitarist 'Buddy Guy'; and a retrospective look at Booker T. & the M.G.s.

...
Wikipedia