- For the businessman, see Alan Greenberg.
Alan Greenberg (b. October 14, 1950) is an American film director, screenwriter, and author.
Greenberg visited Jamaica from a young age, and was a friend of Bob Marley. Following Marley's death, Marley's family asked Greenberg to make a film about Marley. In 1981, Greenberg filmed Land of Look Behind (1982), a documentary film that includes footage of Marley's funeral as well as scenes filmed in Jamaica's remote Cockpit Country and the capital city of Kingston. The film ended up being more of a visionary portrait of the Jamaica of that period (focusing on the Rastafari movement and reggae culture) than a film primarily about Marley. The film has won considerable critical acclaim, as well as winning the Gold Hugo Award for Best Documentary in the Chicago International Film Festival, the U.S.'s largest film competition. Land of Look Behind has also been honored as the best American documentary film of the past 25 years, and the legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog says "'Land of Look Behind' has achieved things never seen before in the history of cinema."
Greenberg has worked closely with Werner Herzog on many projects. He served as a special unit photographer on the films Mandingo (1975) and 1900, by Bernardo Bertolucci (1976). He has also written fifteen screenplays (some of which remain unfilmed) and three books. His unusual book Heart of Glass, about the making of the Werner Herzog masterwork of the same name, was called "The best book on the making of a film ever written" by Rolling Stone magazine.
In 2008 Herzog will direct a film based on Greenberg's screenplay "The Cheese and the Worms", and Greenberg will produce and direct a film based on his acclaimed screenplay "Love in Vain", the first factual account of the mysterious blues genius Robert Johnson, which was also the first screenplay ever published by a major house (Doubleday) as literature. A film about Greenberg and his uncompromising fight to make "Love in Vain," called Robert Johnson in Hell, will be directed by the noted New York film director Michael Almereyda.
Films
As director
- 1982 - Land of Look Behind
- 1988 - Living Dreams
Books
- Greenberg, Alan (1976). Heart of Glass. Text and photos by A. Greenberg, scenario by W. Herzog, based on H. Achternbusch's Die Stunde des Todes. Munich: Skellig.
- Greenberg, Alan (1994). Love in Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson. 1st Da Capo Press ed. New foreword by Martin Scorsese; introduction by Stanley Crouch. Screenplay of an unproduced motion picture. New York: Da Capo Press. (Originally published: Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1983.) ISBN 030680557X.
- Greenberg, Alan (1983). Love in Vain: The Life and Legend of Robert Johnson. 1st ed. A Dolphin book. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0385156790.
Greenberg, Alan (2008). In the I (Selected Photographs). Portland, Oregon: Yeti Press.
External links
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