Director
Braden King co-directed the film DUTCH HARBOR: WHERE THE SEA BREAKS ITS BACK. Made in collaboration with photographer Laura Moya, DUTCH HARBOR is a lyric, non-fiction meditation on the life and landscape of an Aleutian Island community off the west coast of Alaska. DUTCH HARBOR has screened in over 20 international film festivals and the film toured internationally with live, improvised soundtrack accompaniment by the critically-acclaimed Boxhead Ensemble, under the direction of composer Michael Krassner. The film was released theatrically in Europe by ED Distribution; Plexifilm will distribute a new, deluxe DVD edition worldwide in 2009.
King is represented for commercial work by New York-based Washington Square Films. Commercial clients include American Airlines, ESPN, Johnson and Johnson, Miller Beer, Nikon, The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, Siemens and UNICEF. He has directed music videos and short films for Sonic Youth, Chan Marshall, Will Oldham, Tortoise, Low, Yo La Tengo and Sparklehorse. King also directed the groundbreaking interactive DVD project LOOKING FOR A THRILL, which features over five hours of expressively rendered interviews with over 112 musicians and artists.
Recent non-narrative work includes HEAVEN IS A PLACE / NOTHING EVER HAPPENS (2007), a film and video installation commissioned by Chris Doyle for the 50,000 BEDS exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and THE STORY IS STILL ASLEEP, a dynamic, multi-channel video piece with live musical accompaniment that premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. His Armenian HERE location scout photographs were included in the Spring, 2008 exhibition MAPPING THE SELF at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.
King’s work has been screened on all major U.S. broadcast networks and HBO, the BBC, Sundance Channel, MTV, Channel 4 (UK) and others. He has guest-lectured at Yale University, The University of Southern California, Bard College, Wheaton College and the Graduate School at the City University of New York. King studied film at the USC School of Cinema-Television in Los Angeles, graduating Magna Cum Laude in 1993.
He lives in New York City with his wife, Mimi, and his two sons, Jonas and Oliver.
Composer
Michael Krassner began composing music for film with the Boxhead Ensemble, a group he first formed in the early ‘90s to score a number of short films by filmmakers Braden King and Larry Stuckey. The Ensemble went on to record the soundtrack to King’s film DUTCH HARBOR: WHERE THE SEA BREAKS ITS BACK at Truckstop Audio Recording Co. (Chicago), where he was a founding partner along with King and musician / recording engineer Joseph Ferguson.
Subsequent Boxhead Ensemble recordings include two live albums from the DUTCH HARBOR film screening tours (The Last Place to Go and Niagara Falls), a soundtrack for the John Hyams HBO documentary THE SMASHING MACHINE and the studio albums Two Brothers, Quartets and Nocturnes.
Over the years, the Boxhead Ensemble’s rotating lineup has included Ken Vandermark, Jim O’Rourke (Sonic Youth, Gastr del Sol), Will Oldham (Palace Music, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy), Glenn Kotche (Wilco), Doug Mccombs (Tortoise), Tim Rutili (Califone), Fred Lonberg-Holm, Scott Tuma, Jim White (Dirty Three, Cat Power) and others.
