Michel Negroponte
Core Faculty, MFA in Film
Profile
Michel Negroponte is an award winning filmmaker who has been making feature length documentaries for more than 35 years.
His films include SPACE COAST (1979), RESIDENT EXILE (1981), SILVER VALLEY (1984), JUPITER’S WIFE (1994), NO ACCIDENT (1996), W.I.S.O.R. (2000), METHADONIA (2005), I’M DANGEROUS WITH LOVE (2009), and AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MICHELLE MAREN (2015).
JUPITER’S WIFE, a portrait of a beguiling homeless woman named Maggie, won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the prize for Best Feature Documentary at the Vancouver and the Santa Barbara Film Festivals. The film was also awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Documentary. It premiered on HBO/Cinemax before getting a nationwide 35mm theatrical release. His other films have been broadcast in the United States on PBS, HBO, and the Sundance Channel, as well as in England, France, Germany, Spain, and Japan. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, The New York Film Festival, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and in festivals in Berlin, Rotterdam, Vancouver, and Japan.
In addition to his own work, he has worked in a producing capacity on many films, among them the Academy Award-nominated CHILDREN UNDERGROUND by Edet Belzberg, MANHATTAN, KANSAS by Tara Wray, and ORTHODOX STANCE, by Jason Hutt. Michel has also taught in the graduate and undergraduate film programs at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Temple University, and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
In 2021, Negroponte will be releasing more than 16 short films he’s made over the years on the website michelnegropontefilm.com.
Contact
Education
BS - Art & Design | MIT
Selected work
MY AUTONOMOUS NEIGHBOR — Michel Negroponte
Fred "Tate" Billings is an outsider artist and post-psychedelic philosopher who spends his days creating playful works about hidden dimensions and galactic time travel. As he journeys from his ramshackle house in the Catskills to New York City, the Maine coast, and the battlefields of Gettysburg, Tate excavates personal and historic mysteries, both real and imagined. The filmmaker Michel Negroponte, inspired by Tate's distinctive collage artworks, has created a layered portrait. “This is a collage film about a collage artist,” Negroponte has explained. “I’ve combined Tate’s unique philosophical point of view, the bizarre knick-knacks that threaten to overtake his home, and his inventions to create a parallel cinematic universe.” In the end, Tate boldly hurtles towards an unexpected destination . . . a place where no man has gone before. (2018)
I'M DANGEROUS WITH LOVE — Michel Negroponte
Filmmaker Michel Negroponte (METHADONIA, JUPITER'S WIFE) enters the ibogaine subculture and follows Dimitri Mugianis over three years, as he takes drug users through the same detox that saved his life. (2010)
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MICHELLE MAREN — Michel Negroponte
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MICHELLE MAREN is another gripping portrait from Michel Negroponte, the director of JUPITER'S WIFE. Once again, Negroponte's subject is a haunted woman whose past will not release her. The film begins with an email from Michelle Maren to the filmmaker because she has seen and admired JUPITER'S WIFE. A middle-aged former beauty queen, go-go dancer, professional escort, and porn star, Michelle lives on disability checks and struggles with clinical depression, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, and childhood trauma. Isolated and alone, she is seeking transformation and another chance through film. What unfolds is a cinematic blend of exposure therapy, psychological investigation, and confession. Secrets are revealed and the film builds to a startling conclusion that is as riveting as any fiction. (2010)
JUPITER'S WIFE — Michel Negroponte
"Michel Negroponte, a documentary filmmaker, meets Maggie one day in Central Park. Maggie claims to be married to the god Jupiter and the daughter of actor Robert Ryan. Michel gets to know Maggie over the next couple of years, and attempts to use her often outlandish stories as clues to reconstruct her past." —James Meek (1995)
Santa Barbara International Film Festival 1995: Winner, Best Documentary Feature Award
Sundance Film Festival 1995: Winner, Special Jury Recognition for Documentary
Sundance Film Festival 1995: Nominee, Grand Jury Prize for Documentary
Vancouver International Film Festival 1995: Winner, Best Documentary Feature (tied for 1st)