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A tribute to filmmaker Joel DeMott.Introduced by her partner Jeff Kreines. Followed by Q&A
Joel DeMott, renowned cinema vérité filmmaker, died on June 13, 2025.
DeMott is best known for her films Seventeen (1983), which she co-directed with Jeff Kreines, and Demon Lover Diary (1980). Alongside Kreines, DeMott created a model of intimate cinema vérité filmmaking that has inspired countless filmmakers.
In 1980, DeMott received significant critical attention for her film Demon Lover Diary, which documents a hapless Kreines as he helps two driven but somewhat deranged Michigan factory workers shoot their low-budget horror film. DeMott films this disastrous production with an unflinching eye. She described Demon Lover Diary as a film about "cultural snobbery, the disintegration of friendship, puppy love, violence, boredom, money… a diary about encountering the Midwest when you're from someplace else." She narrates the film in a wry, confessional voiceover that has, knowingly or not, inspired countless filmmakers.
Shot and processed for just US$600, Demon Lover Diary was the first recipient of the Los Angeles Film Critic Association's annual award for Best Independent/Experimental Feature, reflecting critical consensus. Variety described it as "emotional, tense and jagged … an involving piece of visceral verite, radically different from conventional documentaries." The Los Angeles Herald Examiner's David Ehrenstein called it "a funny, frightening exhilarating film." In The Observer, Philip French praised the film as "an alarming look beneath the floorboards of American lower-middle-class life, at the madness engendered by pathetic dreams of sudden success. Fantastic."
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