MANFRED KIRCHHEIMER, Director
Born in 1931 in Germany, Manfred (Manny) Kirchheimer came to the US in 1936 when his family fled the Nazis. He studied film at Hans Richter's Institute of Film Techniques of the City College and spent 24 years in the NY film industry as an editor, director, and cameraman, editing over 300 films for the documentary departments of American television networks, with subjects ranging from cultural programming such as Leonard Bernstein in Venice, for CBS to biography for Time-Life Films as in Krushchev Remembers.
Stations of the Elevated (1980) and We Were So Beloved (1986) are Kirchheimer's most celebrated films. Stations, featured at the New York Film Festival, is a lyrical documentary that follows elevated subway trains that are illicitly painted by slum youths. In We Were So Beloved, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, Kirchheimer probes the experiences and attitudes of Jewish refugees and survivors from Nazi Germany, who had created a community in northern Manhattan's Washington Heights.
Other films include Colossus on the River (1963), Haiku (1965), Leroy Douglas (1967), Claw (1968), Short Circuit (1973), Bridge High (1975), Tall: The American Skyscraper and Louis Sullivan (2004), and SprayMasters (2008).
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