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A
director of both theater and film, Mirra
Bank has supported the National Board
of Review as a member of the Board of
Directors for 13 years.
Raised
in Rye, New York, Bank was a painter and
graphic artist during her college years,
which led to an interest in photography
and then film. Always a fan of
Fellini and the East European filmmakers,
she “came to film mostly through non-Hollywood
enthusiasms.” She includes as her
influences: Italian neo-realists, French
New Wave, John Cassavetes, Nick Ray,
Ivan Passer and “anything by Orson Welles.”
Bank went to the London School
of Film Technique briefly, then worked
in London in film editing before returning
to start her career in New York City.
While
working as an editor at Channel 13, Bank
made her first film, Yudie ,
about her aunt who was born and raised
on the Lower East Side. It went to the
New York Film Festival and from then on,
Bank worked as a director. “My first feature
was Enormous Changes ,” she recalls.
“It was based on three stories by NYC
writer Grace Paley, with a screenplay
by John Sayles. We shot it on a
shoestring budget in Hell's Kitchen and
the East Village.” The film, which starred
Kevin Bacon, Ellen Barkin, and David Strathairn
premiered at the Sundance Film Festival
in 1983 and went on to a critically praised
theatrical release.
It
was in preparing to make Enormous
Changes that Bank got involved in
theater work. “I wanted to understand
how best to collaborate with actors and
to support their craft as a director.”
Some of her many stage credits
include: Colette in Love
starring Shirley Knight, Murray Schisgal's
Pushcart Peddlers starring Bob
Balaban, and the world premiere of Schisgal's
Mentors – a trilogy written
for and starring Eli Wallach and Anne
Jackson.
Ms.
Bank's features and documentaries have
aired frequently on PBS, including 1995's
Nobody's Girls , with Cloris
Leachman, Blair Brown and Esther Rolle.
Her most recent film, Last Dance
marks the realization of a project started
over four years ago.
It
was the Spring of 2000 when Bank and her
husband attended a performance by the
exuberant modern dance company, Pilobolus,
at the Joyce Theater. They were
blown away by the company's work,
and after going backstage to thank the
artistic director who had invited them,
Bank asked him what the group's next project
was. “He said they were about to
collaborate with Maurice Sendak on a dark,
East European Grimm's Fairytale-like project,
likely dealing with the Holocaust,” she
remembers. " I said, ‘that sounds
like a movie.'” Ten months of shooting,
over a year of editing, and many hours
garnering financial support later, the
result was Bank's award-winning documentary,
Last Dance . The film
follows the stormy relationship between
Pilobolus and Sendak, as they create a
haunting dance-theater work. Last
Dance has been honored at festivals
and screenings across the country and
was in consideration for an Academy Award
nomination in 2002. “The most challenging
thing about making the film was keeping
everyone spiritually and creatively together
for almost three years with very little
money,” she recalls. “But we all committed
to the film as an act of faith.
Without that it never would have happened.”
Bank
is a member of the Actor's Studio in New
York, where she co-runs the Playwrights
& Directors Unit with Academy-Award
winning actress Estelle Parsons. “It's
been a privilege to work with the immensely
gifted actress and director, who was also
Artistic Director of the Actors Studio
for six years,” said Bank. She's
also found that being part of the organization
has been a terrific learning experience.
“The Studio is unique for the quality
of the work of its founders and many current
members. The Studio's commitment
to the actor's process and to a vision
of theater as a collaborative craft shared
among actors, directors and writers is
the best way I know of to achieve powerful
work.”
Ms.
Bank is now directing the Great Music
for a Great City presentation of Franz
Schubert's Winterreise with
Lynn Redgrave narrating and is also currently
in pre-production on Good Behavior
, an original screenplay by Richard
Brockman.
Top
Favorite Films of All Time
The
Wizard of Oz, dir. Victor Fleming
La
Jetee , dir. Chris Marker
Raging
Bull , dir. Martin Scorcese
Dr.
Strangelove, dir. Stanley Kubrick
Chinatown,
dir. Roman Polanski
Robin
& Marion, dir. Richard Lester
Rashomon
, dir. Akira Kurosawa
Intimate
Lighting, dir. Ivan Passer
The
Rules of the Game, dir. Jean Renoir
The
Garden of the Finzi-Continis , dir.
Bernardo Bertolucci
The
Leopard, dir. Lucino Visconti
Anything
by Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini
or Buster Keaton
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