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Face it, Jim. She's a zombie.
The first time I heard of Michael Almereyda, I was talking to a friend about going to see a movie. She had heard about this film Nadja, it was something of a quirky vampire film. At the time, I was all of 18, a freshman in college; this didn’t strike me as something I was interested in. About two years and several Intro to Film courses later, I once again stumbled upon Nadja. This time I watched and was engulfed in a film that had such a unique look: it utilized stark black and white photography mixed with pixilated footage from a Fisher-Price toy camera. In addition to the visuals, the sound design and music in the film was amazing, as was the writing. I was impressed, and more importantly, inspired.
I could go on in depth about each of Almereyda’s films, but that’s actually the point of the site itself: to offer a focused but wide-ranging look at Almereyda’s work, gathering together a variety of information, commentary and reviews. What I can say is that when you watch a film by Michael Almereyda, you can tell. His films are often surreal, dabbling in dark comedy. His characters are multi-dimensional. Hope and beauty, and the tangled relationships between people, are recurrent themes. He uses sound and music as character. His fascination with innovation always shows through, not as a sign of rebellion against standard Hollywood practice, but as an impulse to tell stories in an exciting way, to see things from a fresh perspective.