John Walter

director

In the field of documentary, John Walter has emerged as the medium's most eloquent and entertaining cultural historian. The Detroit-born director, who is also an unpublished poet, began his career in the film industry as a boom operator and worked in that capacity on Sam Raimi's *Evil Dead II*. In the mid 90s, he became an editor, beginning with Norman Reedus' *Messenger* (1994), and in 1995 he directed "Edison's Miracle of Light", an episode of PBS' television series *The American Experience*. In 2002, Walter made his documentary feature debut with *How to Draw a Bunny*, a portrait of the Pop Art collage artist and prankster Ray Johnson, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Documentary. He has since directed the small screen doc *The First Amendment Project: Some Assembly Required* for Court TV and edited a number of projects, including Thom Powers' *Guns & Mothers* (2003) and Amir Bar-Lev's *My Kid Could Paint That*. He currently lives in New York City's East Village with his wife, filmmaker Adriane Giebel.