
Daniel Raim
Directing
Biography
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Daniel Raim attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Raim is known for his documentaries about overlooked artists of Hollywood's Golden Age, including "The Man on Lincoln's Nose" nominated for the 2001 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short Subject. Raim's 2015 doc "Harold and Lillian A Hollywood Love Story" (a New York Times Critic's Pick) premiered as an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for The Golden Eye (L’Œil d'or, le prix du documentaire - Cannes). In addition to his theatrical films, Daniel has written, produced, and directed 28 original documentaries for the Criterion Collection about cinema masters, including John Cassavetes, Buster Keaton, Alfred Hitchcock, Andrei Tarkovsky, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Kelly Reichardt. Raim's "In Search of Ozu" premiered on the Criterion Channel to rave reviews in 2018. In 2019 Raim directed and produced the TCM Original Documentary "Image Makers: The Adventures of America's Pioneer Cinematographers." Raim's fourth documentary feature, "Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen," will be released in Spring 2022 by Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber. Raim has screened his films and lectured at: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, HOT DOCS, Cannes Film Festival, DOC NYC, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, AFI Conservatory: Harold Lloyd Master Seminar, Walt Disney Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, ILM, DreamWorks Animation SKG, Sony Animation Studios, and Canadian Film Center/TIFF Bell Lightbox, among others. Raim has a passion for education, and in 2016 he embarked on an academic tour through India, where he screened his films and lectured on and the art and craft of documentary filmmaking. In 2017, Daniel partnered with Desktop-Documentaries.com and created an online course entitled: Documentary Storytelling and Scriptwriting.
Known For

A new documentary by Daniel Raim and Eugene Suen on the making of "Flowers of Shanghai," featuring behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with Mark Lee Ping-bing, producer and editor Liao Ching-sung, production designer Hwarng Wern-ying, and sound recordist Tu Duu-chih.
Beautified Realism: The Making of 'Flowers of Shanghai'

Working largely uncredited in the Hollywood system, storyboard artist Harold and film researcher Lillian left an indelible mark on classics by Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski and many more.
Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story

A lonely artist brings a young drifter back to his tiny apartment to live with him. Between his obsessive tendencies and her non-stop drinking, something strange happens: they start to care for each other.
Dirty Beautiful

The fall of 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of Fiddler on the Roof, the film Pauline Kael (The New Yorker) called "the most powerful movie musical ever made." Narrated by Jeff Goldblum, FIDDLER'S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN captures the humor and drama of director Norman Jewison's quest to recreate the lost world of Jewish life in Tsarist Russia and re-envision the beloved stage hit as a wide-screen epic. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Daniel Raim puts us in the director's chair and in Jewison's heart and mind, drawing on behind-the-scenes footage and never-before-seen stills as well as original interviews with Jewison, Topol (Tevye), composer John Williams, production designer Robert F. Boyle, film critic Kenneth Turan, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and actresses Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, and Neva Small (Tevye’s daughters). The film explores how the experience of making Fiddler deepened Jewison as an artist and revived his soul.
Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen

In a new video for the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck, Marvel Comics mastermind Stan Lee talks about his friendship with Alain Resnais.
Marvel Mon Amour

Documentary following the history of America's first cinematographers.
Image Makers: The Adventures of America's Pioneer Cinematographers

Unveiling Yasujiro Ozu’s legacy through his personal diaries, letters, and interviews, the documentary delves into his life, creative process, and lasting impact on filmmaking.
The Ozu Diaries
Cinematographer John Bailey and Matt Severson, director of the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, examine the main reason why The Story of Temple Drake was once considered unfilmable as well as its cinematography.
Casting a Shadow

Set design has been one of the most overlooked jobs in film, receiving little critical attention until recently. In this Oscar-nominated documentary short, director Daniel Raim puts the spotlight on one of the best in the field, creating a witty, informative inside view of the filmmaking process.
The Man on Lincoln's Nose

A short documentary made for the 2019 Criterion Collection DVD release of NOTORIOUS featuring new and archival interviews with scholars Steven D. Katz and Bill Krohn, storyboard artists Gabriel Hardman and Harold Michelson, production designer Robert F. Boyle, and others. Filmmaker Daniel Raim delves into the extensive preproduction and previsualization processes Alfred Hitchcock undertook to ensure his cinematic vision for NOTORIOUS would be realized precisely.
Writing with the Camera

This new piece, featuring Andrew Stanton and late production designer Ralph Eggleston -- who recently died on August 28 -- focuses on the color scripts he created to help bring WALL-E to life. Under the circumstances, it doubles as a tribute to the talented Pixar mainstay, who also did similar work on Toy Story and Finding Nemo and gave Stanton one of his first jobs in the field.
Ralph-E: The Art of the Color Script

In this documentary, filmmaker Daniel Raim delves into Yasujiro Ozu's remarkable late work, in which the master made the leap from black and white to color. In his stirring tribute to the great filmmaker, Raim examines Ozu's life and work through archival treasures such as his diary and the red teakettle from the family drama "Equinox Flower" (1958); sits down with Ozu's nephew and the producer of the director's gently elegiac final film, "An Autumn Afternoon" (1962); and interweaves many scenes and images from the vibrant and humane films with which the director capped his career.
In Search of Ozu

The Los Angeles Times Critics' Pick Something’s Gonna Live is an intimate portrait of life, death, friendship and the movies, as recalled by some of Hollywood's greatest cinema artists. Academy Award®-nominated director Daniel Raim (The Man on Lincoln’s Nose), captures the late life coming together of renowned art directors Robert Boyle (North by Northwest, The Birds), Henry Bumstead (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sting) and Albert Nozaki (The War of the Worlds, The Ten Commandments), storyboard illustrator Harold Michelson (The Graduate, Star Trek: The Motion Picture), and master cinematographers Haskell Wexler (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Medium Cool) and Conrad Hall (In Cold Blood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). These prolific artists have worked on a total of 400 films, garnering 25 Academy Award® nominations and 8 wins.
Something's Gonna Live

Time Travelers, a new documentary by Daniel Raim featuring interviews with John Bengtson and film historian Marc Wanamaker, reveals newly discovered connections between Buster Keaton’s MGM debut and the earliest films of his career.
Time Travelers: Uncovering Old LA in Keaton Comedies

A tour through the vaults of Pixar. WALL-E writer-director Andrew Stanton unearths a few treasures, including his sketchbook, concept art, visual gag pitches, and more, while recounting stories from several decades of his life and career.
A Visit to the Pixar Living Archive

THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE is dedicated to filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki’s longtime friend and collaborator, the film critic and festival programmer Peter von Bagh. In this new video essay, filmmaker Daniel Raim explores Kaurismäki’s oeuvre through the world of von Bagh.
Aki and Peter

Laura Truffaut shares her memories of her legendary filmmaker father.
Introducing My Father, François Truffaut

In this new video by filmmaker Daniel Raim, production designer Robert F. Boyle uncovers how two great artists—Alfred Hitchcock and Edward Hopper—mastered the subtle art of suspense.
Hitchcock, Hopper, and the Penultimate Moment

A new documentary by Daniel Raim on Yasujiro Ozu's relationship with longtime screenwriter Kogo Noda.
Ozu & Noda
Exploring relationship between writer, and director!