Born in 1955 in Brooklyn, NY, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt has long been settled in San Francisco. There, he went to Psychology school and even worked as a therapist, an experience perfectly fit for the elaboration of an experimental filmmaking which combines intimacy and social concerns, particularly through a very personal use of archive images.

Usually choosing black and white photography and a short format – his films are shorter than 30 minutes -, Rosenblatt became a true aesthete of minimalism. Recognition to his work began after 1998, when his movie Human Remains received honors at the Sundance Festival, opening way to another 26 international awards for this work, which uses images of several dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco and Mao.

Prayer (2002) is one of his reflections about the 9/11 attacks, calling out for tolerance by using the images of Muslim pilgrims.

Fatherhood is the focus of I Used to be a Filmmaker (2003), where the director creates a series of vignettes about ordinary events from the birth to the first steps of his first daughter. The death of his younger brother, at 9, is the conducting thread of Phantom Limb (2005), in which he explores the feelings of loss, pain, guilt and penitence that upset him up to this day.

Afraid So (2006) exposes the feeling of fear using a poem in which each stanza makes up a new question. I Just Wanted to Be Somebody (2007) reopens the discussion about an antigay militant from the late 70’s, Anita Bryant.