Peter Emanuel Goldman
Directing
Biography
Peter Emanuel Goldman (born June 5, 1939 in New York) is an American film director. He did not have a strong interest in film but did see early works from the French New Wave. He enrolled in university, first in New York and then at La Sorbonne in Paris, but did not complete his studies. Returning to New York, he was given an old 8mm camera from his father, and he began shooting street scenes in Greenwich Village. His first feature-length film, Echoes of Silence, took the sorts of everyday scenes he had been shooting and created a fictional story in which to place them, following the adventures of an aimless young man wandering the streets of New York. He cast his friend, sculptor Miguel Chacour, in the lead role. The silent film was shot over two years on a budget of $1600. It premiered at the 1966 New York Film Festival. Goldman then returned to Europe to shoot his next film Wheel of Ashes, starring Pierre Clémenti. It premiered at the 1968 Venice Film Festival. Following the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics, Goldman became a committed Zionist. He wanted his wife to convert to Judaism but she did not, and the two ultimately divorced. Goldman served as head of Americans for a Safe Israel during the 1980s. He directed its 1983 documentary NBC in Lebanon: A Study in Media Misrepresentation, which alleged that NBC Nightly News' coverage of the 1982 Lebanon War was biased against Israel in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Known For
“New York plays itself, as Taylor Mead and Winifred Bryan regale in pas de deux among the trashcans and the towers. The Studiedly Goofy and the Monumentally Grand are joined in masterly pas de don’t [...] The awed couple do battle with the status quo and teach the world to dance on the head of a bin. Rice detects real dignity in Bryan and amazing grace in Mead as they essay solitary promenades through the parks, subways and streets of a wintery New York landscape. Photographed and directed by Ron Rice, edited and scored by Taylor Mead.” –Edward Leffingwell
The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man
A stripped-down account of a young man's existential reckoning. "As dust hides a mirror, lust hides the self," reads one of the film's Vedanta-sourced intertitles. And indeed, while the Pierre Clementi protagonist's inner life remains obscure, the Saint-Germain-des-Pres neighborhood that offers his temptations appears in harrowing detail.
Wheel of Ashes
A chronicle of the lives of twenty-somethings adrift in New York City, finding tremendous pathos in the smallest moments: a furtive glance across a museum gallery, girls putting on makeup, a stroll beneath the pulsing lights of Times Square marquees.
Echoes of Silence
A film by Peter Emmanuel Goldman. This sexploitation film, unfortunately lost, and never seen again after 1968, was shot in different styles, sometimes imitating Godard, Bergman, Truffaut or Bertolucci. The producer hated it and Brian DePalma wrote a funny article about it in the Village Voice. All that remains of it is a 35mm trailer and 9 min of 16mm work print.
The Sensualist
Directed by Peter Emmanuel Goldman.
8mm Reels
Pestilent City covers Manhattan from South to North, from Times Square to Harlem, finding along the way ever more poverty, violence, rage and tragic drunkenness.
Pestilent City
Times Square at night... alien, death-like... negative images... –P. E. G.
Night Crawlers
Silent comedy about a formal dinner on the floor of the IRT subway. N. Y. C. - P.E.G.