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MARK LAPORE, 53
The Boston Globe ran today this obituary for experimental filmmaker, documentarian, and teacher Mark LaPore, who died September 11 in Boston.
LaPore’s newest film (pictured at right), Kolkata, will premiere next week at the New York Film Festival’s “Views from the Avant Garde.”
From the piece:
“Mark McElhatten, cocurator of the Views from the Avant-Garde program of the New York Film Festival, described Mr. LaPore’s films as ”unique, a form of visual anthropology but equally about the mystery of being and film as consciousness. These uncompromising films have enormous integrity and deserve a very important place within the entire history of film.'”
For the generation after him, LaPore was known for both his filmmaking but also his teaching. For many younger experimental filmmakers, LaPore was a seminal creative catalyst. Film and videomaker Erica Beckman taught at MassArt with LaPore and is quoted in the piece.
“‘Mark was an absolutely inspired and committed teacher,’ said Beckman, a MassArt faculty member who designed the school’s filmmaking curriculum with Mr. LaPore. ‘Students far and wide have followed careers in filmmaking because of him. He was an absolute artist, and in the last few months of his life finished four new films.'”
Another filmmaker, Elisabeth Subrin, spoke of LaPore’s influence on her:
“‘I can’t think of any other single person who changed the course of my life than Mark,’ said Elisabeth Subrin, a professor of film who taught at Harvard before going to The Cooper Union in New York. ‘It’s impossible to understand the impact he has had on many important filmmakers who went through his program,’ she said. ‘In the study of cultures through films, Mark was really ahead of his time.'”
