I’M DANGEROUS WITH LOVE (2009) Digital Video, 85 minutes
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Directed by Michel Negroponte
Executive Producers: Julie Goldman, Krysanne Katsoolis and Caroline Stevens
Produced by Blackbridge Productions in association with Cactus Three
Sales and Distribution First Run Features
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I'M DANGEROUS WITH LOVE is about addiction and rehabilitation, activism and shamanism. Dimitri Mugianis who starts out as the heavily addicted front man for the band Leisure Class ends his long drug and alcohol addiction with an experimental treatment that uses the hallucinogen ibogaine. MORE>
METHADONIA (2005) Digital Video, 85 minutes
Produced and Directed by Michel Negroponte
An HBO Documentary Films Presentation
Executive Producer Sheila Nevins
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"Methadonia" is a borderland of recovering heroin addicts on methadone maintenance. It's a place where the seasons run together into one long rainy spell between an oblivious past and a receding future. Addicts pass the time on benzos and other prescription drugs that enhance the methadone, but that also keeps them stuck in a gray area between addiction and Straightland. You meet Millie who has 28 years of drug use behind her and now counsels a group of addicts in recovery. Bill, the canny ex-teamster who has been on methadone for almost 30 years and acquired a chemist's grasp of drug abuse. George, an old rocker making a fresh start in dreams that he can't wake up from. Susie and Eddie, who have the most desperate reason to clean up: a child on the way. Mario, who stopped using heroin 45 years ago but still can't get straight. Finally there is Steve, the charismatic homeless man who might be walking proof that rehab is possible. "Methadonia" is about the elusive nature of recovery and the lifelong grip of addiction. But it's also about men and women who stir with memories of themselves and hope they will wake up one morning, have a cup of coffee, and not think about getting high. METHADONIA was screened at the 43rd New York Film Festival
THE SIGHTSEER (2003) Digital Video, 40 minutes
Produced and Directed by Michel Negroponte
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A hybrid film that blends narrative elements with documentary scenes, archival photographs, newsreel footage and voice overs. The film is a history of marriage superimposed on the history of New York City with a cast that includes Joel Rooks and Lynn Cohen. The film was not released. A shorter version of the film was completed in 2011 and uploaded on VIMEO.
W.I.S.O.R. (2000) Digital Video, 75 minutes
Produced and Directed by Michel Negroponte
Co-produced by Jane Weiner
Produced in association with ITVS and ZDF Arte
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Spanning three centuries of technology, W.I.S.O.R. is a true original. It's largely an intriguing historical investigation into the advent of Manhattan's hundred-year-old subterranean steam heating system - a vast, eerie labyrinth of uninhabitable tunnels that feed the insatiable appetite of the city's steel and concrete giants. This extraordinary achievement sets the stage for the sci-fi infused character study of the Welding and Inspection Steam Operations Robot, aka W.I.S.O.R. Created for the insurmountable task of repairing our crumbling steam system, this 700 lb. "robo-welder" has been given a voice, and with it ... emotions. Utilizing a brilliant combination of non-fiction and dramatic storytelling techniques, archival footage and a haunting music score, Michel Negroponte's creation is a Manhattan "Metropolis" for the 21st century and a bold example of how the documentary format is evolving. - The Screening Room, NYC
NO ACCIDENT(1996) Video, 22 minutes
Produced and Directed by Michel Negroponte
Co-produced by Peter Lohner and Jane Weiner
A ZDF Arte - ALIVE TV co-production
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No Accident is an impressionistic journey through the underworld of the New York subway, surely the most fantastical locale ever to be taken completely for granted by it's habitues. Our guide is played by the enigmatic poet and avant-garde legend, John Giorno. Is this character a semi-divine personification of the subway as he seems to be claiming, or a disturbed insomniac? Is he prophet or prankster? Willam Burroughs once said, "John Giorno's litanies from the underworld of the mind reverberate in your head and ventriloquize your own thoughts."
JUPITER'S WIFE (1994) 35mm, 80 minutes
Produced and Directed by Michel Negroponte
Co-produced by Jane Weiner and Doug Block
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Jupiter's Wife is a haunting real-life mystery story. It begins with a chance encounter in Central Park between documentary filmmaker Michel Negroponte and Maggie, a beguiling homeless woman in her mid-forties. Or is it chance? - for Maggie claims to have been expecting him for days. She also claims to be the wife of the god Jupiter and the daughter of the late Hollywood actor Robert Ryan. Her conversation is laced with psychic messages, bits of Greek mythology and other seemingly bizarre fictions. Clue by clue, Maggie's enigma is deciphered and an astonishing story is revealed. Jupiter's Wife is a complex psychological drama that is as riveting as any fiction.
Special Jury Prize, 1995 Sundance Film Festival
Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Documentary Filmmaking
SILVER VALLEY (1984) 16mm 45 minutes
Co-directed by Michel Negroponte, Peggy Stren and Mark Erder
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With SILVER VALLEY, the filmmakers have achieved a complex and fascinating film that is, on one level, a report on the recession's devastating impact upon a family and a town. But even more provocative is the way the film reveals the unravelling of a once tightly knit family, and the sad surreal textures of their daily lives as unemployment becomes a new reality. Silver Valley has many of the qualities of a James Agee/Walker Evans inquiry into economic hardships in America, while exhibiting a fascination with the sometimes bizarre life styles of Americans living on the fringe. It's a remarkable film. - Ross McElwee
RESIDENT EXILE (1981) 16mm, 30 minutes
Co-directed, by Michel Negroponte, Ross McElwee and Alexandra Anthony
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After enduring fourteen months of imprisonment and torture by the Shah's regime, Iranian engineering student Kazem Ala flees to Houston, where he marries an American woman and resumes his studies. But Ala remains a man without a country: during the hostage crisis, his impassioned criticisms of American foreign policy and the repressive Ayatollah government alienate him from both his adopted and native lands. - Museum of Modern Art
SPACE COAST (1979) 16mm, 90 minutes
Co-directed by Michel Negroponte and Ross McElwee
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Michel Negroponte and Ross McElwee follow three residents of Cape Canaveral, Florida, several years after the phasing out of Apollo moon missions: a salty newspaper reporter who has witnessed 1,600 consecutive launches; an out-of-work maintenance man who now leads a motorcycle gang; and the owner of a small construction company who sidelines as the clown-host of a local kids television show. Negroponte and McElwee transcend the “God, guns, and family” clichés of small town America in this emotionally complex, novelistic portrait of people living in hard times.'' - Museum of Modern Art