SAMARA HALPERIN is a filmmaker from New York City, currently living in Oakland, California. She has been making short films and videos for queer youth since she was a queer youth and has screened in more than 50 film festivals worldwide. "Uptown by Midnight" is her debut feature length film. She received a BFA in film from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in film from The California College of Arts and Crafts.

VIEW SCREENING LIST

"... She makes her own worlds in films that range from sorrowful, poetic to bombastic, incendiary, colorful and campy. But ever-present is a startling underlying vulnerability that speaks, in the end, so clearly about human frailty and the strange culture we inhabit. Ms. Halperin's Tumbleweed Town was one of the more touching and funny things I've seen in years."
---HARRY DODGE, Director By Hook or By Crook

Uptown by Midnight is a gawky, punk, teen dramedy set in New York City, 1984.

DIRECTORS STATEMENT:
When I was eleven years old, my mother took me to see John Water's "Polyester" at the now long gone New Yorker Theater. As I sat in the dark with my scratch and sniff "Odorama" card, I realized that in the movies anything was possible. "Polyester" changed me forever and 20 years later, my mother is still sorry she took me to see it.

As a gay teenager growing up in the eighties, I searched to find my image reflected in the media. Other than the gyrating long nailed lesbian strippers on the midnight Robyn Byrd show, and the vampire lesbians in "The Hunger". the search was pretty dismal. Now I make the films I would have died to see when I was a kid.

My films are equally inspired by John Waters, John Hughes, John Cassavetes and Beverly Hills, 90210.

Please contact Steakhaus Productions for more information on how you can help finance this project.

FILMOGRAPHY:

Sorry, Brenda - 2001. Super-8 film transferred to Video. 2 min.
An experimental exploration of the homoerotic subtext of Beverly Hills 90210

"It's about time the homoeroticism of 90210 was brought to the forefront!"
---JASON PRIESTLEY

"...Samara Halperin's Sorry Brenda manipulates them (90210) with little resistance into a brief, silent steamily atmospheric black-and-white bathroom shower flirtation."
---SF BAY GUARDIAN

Tumbleweed Town - 1999.
Finalist in Planet Out's Short Movie Awards.
16mm. film, running time 8 min. Stop motion animation.

Find true love with Todd the TONKA cowboy on his hitchhiking adventures through the Texas desert. Featuring original score by "Corner Tour".

"In her stop-motion short, Tumbleweed Town, Samara Halperin indulges her fondness for 70's toys and the sight of two cowboys in love. It's a beautiful thing!."
---RELEASE PRINT

"...Samara Halperin's mesmerizing cowboy animation Tumbleweed Town."
---FAF

Shari Shapiro's Slumber Party - 16mm, Color, 4 min. 30 sec.1998

A short film about betrayal, reconciliation, Cheetos and Joan Jett.

"Our favorite short"- St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9/99.

"I got a big kick out of Samara Halperin's Shari Shapiro's Slumber Party. There's nothing like a girlhood crush on Joan Jett to kick off a pop culture program."
---RELEASE PRINT MAGAZINE

Corn Dog Kings - 1998. Video, running time ten minutes.
Directed by Samara Halperin & Laura Plotkin.
A day in the life of five corn dog eating, car washing cowboys in Oakland, CA.

"Viewer discretion is advised for the following five videos...Corn Dog Kings...Do you really need the descriptions? You know you're going anyway."
---SF BAY TIMES

Queer Bait - 1992. 16mm film, running time ten minutes.
The story of a young dyke who knows a lot of jerks.

The Prom I Never Had - 1990. 16mm film.
The title says it all.

Lady - 1990. Video, running time five minutes.
A hilarious adventure in female Drag Queenism.