Biography
Roger Deutsch was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin. After graduating Antioch College he took a job in the mail room of Joseph Green Pictures, a small specialist film distributor in New York City. The following year he helped Green develop a non-theatrical distribution department, which Deutsch directed for the next three years. In 1979, he met the German director Ulli Lommel for whom he co-wrote, and produced the feature film Blank Generation. Starring Richard Hell, Carol Bouquet and Andy Warhol, Blank Generation has had a cult following to this day and had its theatrical premiere in France as recently as 2007.
In the early 1980s Deutsch worked as a free lance line producer for low budget horror films while pursuing an MFA at Bard College. In 1983 Deutsch completed the short film Dead People. which he edited from hours of film he had shot in 1974. The making of Dead People initiated a life-long creative focus questioning the reliability and apparent inevitability of conventional narrative. Revised in 2005, Dead People has been invited to festivals worldwide winning prizes at the San Francisco Art Institute Film and Video Festival in 2004, the Black Maria Film Festival in 2005, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, and Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival in 2006.
In 1984 Deutsch completed Jews, which he compiled from the 10 hours of 16 mm film his maternal grandfather had shot in Chicago from 1927 to 1943. Jews won a prize at the Black Maria Film Festival and was selected as part of the touring program of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, both in 1985. Because of his long-standing interest in the parallels and cross-pollination between experimental cinema and contemporaneous developments in the plastic arts, Deutsch was commissioned by the Edward Thorpe Gallery to make a documentary on the Dutch expatriate artist Anton Van Dalen, whose work explored the gentrification of the East Village in New York City The result, The View From Avenue A, was shown, along with Dead People and Jews, in a one man show at the Collective for Living Cinema in New York City, November 1985. Reviewing the show for Art Forum, Barbara Kruger wrote: "Deutsch's illuminating picturings push close to film's ability to reactivate the feel of that which has disappeared; but rather than lolling in the shelter of the simulative, these films subtly questions their characters' relation to history and to their own deaths. They are portraits that remind us these characters are done, through with, no more: yet at the same time they bring them "to life." They question cinema's ability to formalize, to resuscitate and to re-represent the past."
After receiving his MFA in 1985 Deutsch worked as a teacher of developmentally disabled adults in Brooklyn and later as Assistant Director of Admissions at Bard College. During this period he shot many rolls of Super 8 film which he decided to keep on the shelf, hoping the passage of time would allow him to develop a distance from the footage; to look at it afresh as "found footage" but with multiple personal resonances for the filmmaker who shot and many years later edited it.
Deutsch also began to devote more time to screenwriting. He moved to Italy in 1993, where he worked as a script writer, script doctor and production consultant for various European production companies.
In late 2001 he completed the feature film Suor Sorriso (Sister Smile) which he directed from a screenplay he co-wrote with the Italian poet Francesca Terrenato. Chronicling the life of the Singing Nun from her hit song Dominique through her drug-fueled downward spiral and eventual suicide, Sister Smile, starring Ginevra Colonna and Antonio Salines, had its world premiere in competition at the Sao Paolo International Film Festival and has been invited to over 20 festivals worldwide.
After completing Sister Smile Deutsch began editing some of the Super 8 film he had shot in the late 80s. The first two films produced, After the Flood and Round Trip were included in a retrospective of Deutsch’s work at the bATik Film Festival in Perugia, October 2003. Revised in 2011, Round Trip received a director’s citation at the Black Maria Film Festival.
In 2004 Deutsch’s short story Mario Makes a Movie, based on his work teaching developmentally disabled adults, was published in Raindance Film Magazine, London. His film adaptation of Mario Makes a Movie, also created from the Super 8 rolls of the 80s, has been invited to many festivals worldwide, winning prizes at the San Francisco Art Institute and Black Maria both in 2005.
Deutsch produced two documentaries in 2004. Un azard habanero – Voci da un'isola (Voices from an Island), directed by Chiara Bellini, received prizes at the Salerno Film Festival, San Diego Women’s Film Festival, Indie Gathering (Cleveland) and Worldfest (Houston). Blue is the Colour…, directed by Chloé Barreau was broadcast on Sky Sports. Also in 2004, on a lark, Deutsch agreed to co-write (with Francesca Terrenato) the lyrics to Into My Soul, (music F.Clary/M. Bottini) which was recorded by Dee Dee Bridgewater in 2004 and featured in the Hollywood film Monster in Law and a very successful Italian detergent commercial.
In 2005 he finished Sancti Spiritus, a feature length documentary about a Cuban family he met while researching a screenplay he had been commissioned to write in the 90s. Sancti Spiritus was broadcast on Cult TV in Italy.
Deutsch moved to San Francisco in 2005 where he as worked as a consultant for California Newsreel a leading distributor of documentary films. He continues to work with “found footage,” most recently his father’s 8-mm home movies. The first of these films, Flower Songs, received a director’s citation at Black Maria in 2006. He also returned to the outtakes of Dead People to create two new short films Some Call it Home (2006) and First Love (2007). In April 2008 Deutsch finished Act Your Age which he created from an instructional film from the 50s. Later that year he created here and there from material shot by both Deutsch and his father, while also cannibalizing material from his earlier films.
He is currently working on Repetition a series of five films with musical titles. The first three films, Prelude, Suite Ancienne and Intermezzo were completed in 2012 and 2013.
Deutsch is currently living in Alameda, Ca.