Directors

1. Tinto Brass

Giovanni Brass was born on 26 March 1933 into the family of a famous artist, Italico Brass, who was his grandfather. Italico gave his grandson a nickname "Tintoretto," which Giovanni later adapted into his cinematic name, Tinto Brass.

Tinto inherited his grandfather's artistic skills, but he applied...

2. Doris Wishman

Director | Satan Was a Lady

Doris Wishman was born on June 1, 1912 in New York City, New York, USA. She was a director and producer, known for Satan Was a Lady (2001), Nude on the Moon (1961) and Keyholes Are for Peeping (1972). She was married to Louis Silverman and Jack Abrahms. She died on August 10, 2002 in Miami, Florida...

3. David F. Friedman

Producer | Matinee Idol

David F. Friedman was born in Birmingham, Alabama. His father was a local newspaperman and his mother was a professional musician who played the piano and organ in silent-movie theaters and in churches. Friedman was exposed to the adult world at the age of four or five when his parents took him out...

4. Joseph W. Sarno

Director | Confessions of a Young American Housewife

Joseph W. Sarno is one of the pioneering directors of the sex-exploitation or "sexploitation" film genre. Known for a distinctly economic style and an abiding interest in tense, psycho-sexual character development, Sarno has also come to be recognized as one of the true geniuses to emerge from the ...

5. Joe D'Amato

Director | Emanuelle e Françoise (Le sorelline)

Joe D'Amato was born Aristide Massaccesi on December 15, 1936, in Rome, Italy. At age 14 he began working for his father, a chief electrician and later the founder of the company A.C.M. By going to school in the daytime, Massaccesi worked afternoons part-time as a stagehand and stage cameraman ...

6. Michael Findlay

Director | The Touch of Her Flesh

Film-maker Michael Findlay was killed in a helicopter accident on the roof of the (then) Pan Am Building in New York city. On his way to John F Kennedy airport to connect with a Paris-bound flight, Findlay was planning to demonstrate his new 3-D camera to potential backers in France. Findlay and ...

7. Radley Metzger

Director | The Opening of Misty Beethoven

One of the pioneers of American adult cinema, Radley Metzger was born in New York. He first made a name in erotic cinema by importing and distributing European erotic films, including the Danish sex film I, a Woman (1965). At around the same time Metzger decided to direct his own features, which ...

8. Andy Milligan

Director | The Degenerates

Andy Milligan was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1929. He was a self-taught film maker, playwright, script writer and costume designer. He grew up mostly in Minnesota, but he and his family moved around the country a lot. His father, Andrew Milligan Sr. (1894-1985) was a captain in the U.S. Army ...

9. Carl Monson

Director | Blood Legacy

Carl Monson was born Carl Jay Williams on September 2, 1932 in Los Angeles County, California. Monson began his career in show business at the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse's School of Theatre. In 1964 Carl founded the critically acclaimed invitational playhouse the Curtain Call Theater in North ...

10. Jesús Franco

Writer | Der Teufel kam aus Akasava

He was only six years old when he started composing music under the protection of his brother Enrique. After the Spanish Civil War he was able to continue his studies at the Real Conservatorio de Madrid, where he finished piano and harmony. Being a Bachelor of Law and an easy-read novel writer (...

11. Jean Rollin

Director | La nuit des traquées

Jean Rollin was born on November 3, 1938 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. He was a director and writer, known for The Night of the Hunted (1980). He was married to Simone Rollin. He died on December 15, 2010 in Paris, France.

12. Stanley A. Long

Producer | Naughty!

Stanley A. Long was born on November 26, 1933 in Lambeth, London, England, UK. He was a producer and cinematographer, known for Naughty! (1974), Bread (1971) and Adventures of a Taxi Driver (1976). He died on September 10, 2012 in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK.

13. Stephanie Rothman

Writer | Terminal Island

Writer/director Stephanie Rothman was one of the few female filmmakers who specialized in low-budget drive-in exploitation fare in the '60s and '70s. Her movies are distinguished by gutsy, strong-willed and sympathetic women main characters and a radical libertarian feminist point of view. ...

14. Gerald Thomas

Director | The Vicious Circle

Educated at Bristol and London, he studied to be a doctor. During the war he served with the Royal Sussex Regiment in Europe and the Middle East. On being demobbed he joined the film industry as an assistant editor at Denham Studios working on October Man (1947) and Hamlet (1948) then as 1st ...

15. Anna Biller

Director | Viva

Anna Biller is a writer and director who creates unique, female-focused, highly visual films. She has a BA from UCLA in art and an MFA from CalArts in art and film. Her first feature Viva played in film festivals all over the world and gained minor cult status, and her second feature The Love Witch...

16. Bruno Mattei

Editor | Double Target

Born in 1931, Bruno Mattei grew up in Rome, Italy, where his father owned a small film editing studio. At age 20 Bruno started working odd jobs at his father's company as his assistant, then went on to other small spots. He wanted to follow in his father's footsteps as a film editor, and soon found...

17. Alfredo Castiglioni

Director | Magia nuda

Alfredo Castiglioni was born on March 18, 1937 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. He was a director and cinematographer, known for Mondo Magic (1975), Africa segreta (1969) and The Last Savage (1978). He died on February 14, 2016 in Gallarate, Lombardy, Italy.

18. Angelo Castiglioni

Director | Magia nuda

Angelo Castiglioni was born on March 18, 1937 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. He was a director and cinematographer, known for Mondo Magic (1975), Africa segreta (1969) and Africa Uncensored (1971). He died on February 17, 2022 in Gallarate, Lombardy, Italy.

19. Massimo Dallamano

Cinematographer | Per un pugno di dollari

Massimo Dallamano was born on April 17, 1917 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. He was a cinematographer and writer, known for A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Tierra mágica (1959) and What Have You Done to Solange? (1972). He died on November 14, 1976 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

20. Umberto Lenzi

Writer | La casa 3

Born in Massa Marittima, Italy on August 6, 1931, Umberto Lenzi was a movie enthusiast since his early grade school years. During those years, he founded various film fan clubs while studying law. Lenzi started out as a journalist for various local newspapers and magazines. Lenzi put off his law ...

21. Ruggero Deodato

Director | Deathcember

Ruggero Deodato was born on May 7, 1939, in Potenza, Italy, and grew up outside Rome. One of his close friends at the time was Renzo Rossellini, the son of famed Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Knowing Ruggerio's love for the movies, Renzo persuaded him to work as a second unit director on ...

22. Sergio Martino

Director | Vendetta dal futuro

Talented, prolific and versatile writer/director Sergio Martino has made a vast array of often solid and enjoyable films in such diverse genres as horror, comedy, Western and science-fiction in a career that spans over 40 years.

Martino was born on July 19, 1938, in Rome, Italy. His grandfather was ...

23. Gualtiero Jacopetti

Writer | Mondo cane

Gualtiero Jacopetti was born on September 4, 1919 in Barga, Tuscany, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for A Dog's Life (1962), Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971) and Mondo candido (1975). He was married to Jolanda Kaldaras. He died on August 17, 2011 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

24. Joe D'Amato

Location_management | Bullets, Fangs and Dinner at 8

Joe D'Amato was born on September 13, 1955 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a producer, known for Bullets, Fangs and Dinner at 8 (2015) and Kung Fu Ghost (2022). He died on September 1, 2020 in El Cajon, California, USA.

25. Lucio Fulci

Writer | Lo squartatore di New York

Lucio Fulci, born in Rome in 1927, remains as controversial in death as he was in life. A gifted craftsman with a sharp tongue and a wicked sense of dark humor, Fulci achieved some measure of notoriety for his gore epics of the late 1970s and early 1980s, but respect was long in coming.

Abandoning ...

26. Ken Russell

Director | The Devils

Ken Russell tried several professions before choosing to become a film director; he was a still photographer and a dancer and he even served in the Army, but film was his destiny. He began by making several short films which paved the way for his brilliant television films of the 1960s that are ...

27. David Lynch

Writer | Twin Peaks

Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future ...

28. Bigas Luna

Writer | Jamón Jamón

Bigas Luna was born on March 19, 1946 in Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. He was a writer and director, known for Jamón, Jamón (1992), Caniche (1979) and Anguish (1987). He was married to Celia Orós. He died on April 6, 2013 in La Riera de Gaià, Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain.

29. Pedro Almodóvar

Writer | Hable con ella

The most internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel was born in a small town (Calzada de Calatrava) in the impoverished Spanish region of La Mancha. He arrived in Madrid in 1968, and survived by selling used items in the flea-market called El Rastro. Almodóvar couldn't study ...

30. Paul Verhoeven

Director | RoboCop

Paul Verhoeven graduated from the University of Leiden, with a degree in math and physics. He entered the Royal Netherlands Navy, where he began his film career by making documentaries for the Navy and later for TV. In 1969, he directed the popular Dutch TV series, Floris (1969), about a medieval ...

31. Park Chan-wook

Director | Oldeuboi

Park Chan-wook was born on August 23, 1963 in Seoul, South Korea. He is a producer and director, known for Oldboy (2003), The Handmaiden (2016) and Decision to Leave (2022). He is married to Eun-hee Kim. They have one child.

32. Andrzej Zulawski

Writer | Possession

Born in Lvov, Ukraine; then he moved with his father Miroslaw Zulawski to Czechoslovakia and later to Poland. In the late 1950s, he studied cinema in France. In the 1960s, he was an assistant of the famous Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. His feature debut The Third Part of the Night (1971) was ...

33. Gaspar Noé

Director | Enter the Void

Gaspar Noé is an Argentinian filmmaker and screenwriter who lives in France. He is the son of Luis Felipe Noé, an Argentinian artist. He directed I Stand Alone, Irréversible, Enter the Void, Love, Climax, Carne, Lux Æterna, Sodomites and Vortex. His films are known for having a sensory overload ...

34. Russ Meyer

Director | Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens

Russell Albion Meyer was born in San Leandro, California, to Lydia Lucinda (Hauck), a nurse, and William Arthur Meyer, a police officer, who divorced during his childhood. His parents were both of German descent. Meyer began winning prizes at 15 with his amateur films. He spent World War II in ...

35. Lars von Trier

Writer | Dancer in the Dark

Probably the most ambitious and visually distinctive filmmaker to emerge from Denmark since Carl Theodor Dreyer over 60 years earlier, Lars von Trier studied film at the Danish Film School and attracted international attention with his very first feature, The Element of Crime (1984). A highly ...

36. Dusan Makavejev

Director | W.R. - Misterije organizma

Dusan Makavejev is the premier figure in Yugoslavian film history; his films are deeply rooted in his nation's painful postwar experiences and draw on important Yugoslavian cinematic and cultural models. Makavejev's work has violated many political and sexual taboos and invited censorship in dozens...

37. Bernardo Bertolucci

Writer | Il conformista

Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director whose films were known for their colorful visual style, was born in Parma, Italy. He attended Rome University and became famous as a poet. He served as assistant director for Pier Paolo Pasolini in the film Accattone (1961) and directed The Grim Reaper (...

38. Nagisa Ôshima

Director | Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

Nagisa Oshima's career extends from the initiation of the "Nuberu bagu" (New Wave) movement in Japanese cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s, to the contemporary use of cinema and television to express paradoxes in modern society. After an early involvement with the student protest movement in ...

39. Pier Paolo Pasolini

Writer | Il Decameron

Pier Paolo Pasolini achieved fame and notoriety long before he entered the film industry. A published poet at 19, he had already written numerous novels and essays before his first screenplay in 1954. His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life ...

40. Peter Strickland

Director | Katalin Varga

Peter Strickland was born in 1973 in Reading, Berkshire, England, UK. He is a director and writer, known for Katalin Varga (2009), In Fabric (2018) and Berberian Sound Studio (2012).

41. Claude Chabrol

Director | Le beau Serge

Claude Chabrol was born on June 24, 1930 in Paris, France. He was a director and writer, known for Le Beau Serge (1958), La Cérémonie (1995) and Story of Women (1988). He was married to Aurore Chabrol, Stéphane Audran and Agnès Goute. He died on September 12, 2010 in Paris, France.

42. Walerian Borowczyk

Director | Docteur Jekyll et les femmes

Born in Kwilcz, Poland, Walerian Borowczyk trained as a painter and lithographer, winning Poland's National Prize in 1953. He began his film career as a film poster designer, then started making short animated films in the late 1950s. Moving to France in the early 1960s, he gained a reputation as a...

43. Luis Buñuel

Writer | Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie

The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the ...

44. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Writer | Faustrecht der Freiheit

Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Openly homosexual, he married twice; one of his wives acted in his films and the other served as his editor. Accused variously by detractors of being anticommunist, male chauvinist, antiSemitic and...

45. Julio Medem

Director | Lucía y el sexo

Julio Medem was born in San Sebastian in northern Spain. As a teenager Medem made short movies with a super-8 camera owned by his father. Some of those films are "El ciego" (1976), "El jueves pasado" (1977) and "Fideos" (1979.) Wanting to know more about the darkest corners of the human mind, Medem...

46. Armando Bo

Writer | Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Armando Bo is known for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), The Last Elvis (2012) and Biutiful (2010).

47. George Harrison Marks

Director | Come Play with Me

George Harrison Marks was a British glamour photographer active in the sex industry from the mid 1950s till his death in the late 1990s. As a photographer he founded the Kamera group of magazines with his then 'supposed' wife, the model and actress Pamela Green, although they were never actually ...

48. Frank Henenlotter

Director | Bad Biology

Writer/director Frank Henenlotter was born August 29, 1950, in New York City. He gleefully "misspent" his youth watching a large array of blithely cheap'n'cheesy low-budget exploitation flicks in various seedy grindhouse theaters on Mahattan's 42nd St. He began making 8mm films as a teenager. His ...

49. Bill Zebub

Director | Night of the Pumpkin

Bill Zebub is known for Night of the Pumpkin (2010), Jesus, the Total Douchebag (2011) and The Worst Horror Movie Ever Made (2005).

50. Larry Cohen

Writer | God Told Me To

Larry Cohen was born July 15, 1936, in New York, New York, and spent time in Kingston, a small town north of New York City. At a young age, his family moved to the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and he eventually majored in film at the historic City College of New York, from which he graduated in ...