Happy 59th Birthday, Johnathan Nossiter! Born today in 1961, this American sommelier, author, film producer and award-winning filmmaker's works have been featured at the Sundance, Berlin, and Cannes Film Festivals.
Nossiter was born to a Jewish family in Washington D.C. He was the son of American author and journalist, Washington Post economics reporter and chief foreign correspondent for The New York Times Bernard D. Nossiter.
Eventually, Jonathan gained a proficiency in five languages respectively. This was due to growing up in England, France, Italy and India, among other places.
He studied painting at the École de Beaux Arts in Paris and at the San Francisco Art Institute, as well as Ancient Greek at Dartmouth College.
After work as an assistant director in the theatre in England (The Newcastle Playhouse, King's Head), Nossiter went to New York.
This was where he landed a job moving office furniture for English film director, writer and producer Adrian Lyne's ('Jacob's Ladder') 1987 American psychological thriller/drama film 'Fatal Attraction'.
This eventually led Nossiter to a position as assistant to director Lyne for the length of the shoot.
It was during the filming that Nossiter met English writer, raconteur and actor Quentin Crisp, of whom later became the star of Nossiter's first feature film.
The was the 1990 American documentary/LGBT film 'Resident Alien'. It starred John Hurt and Puerto Rican transgender actress and Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn.
The film is a comic portrait of the last, tattered days of New York’s bohemian underground.
Six years later, Nossiter's second feature film was in directing the 1997 American dark romantic comedy drama/independent film 'Sunday'.
The film later won the 19th Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize for Best Film in January of that same year.
Three years later, Nossiter co-wrote and directed the film of which he is best known. This was the 2000 French/Greek psychological thriller romance/independent drama film 'Signs & Wonders'.
The film had been inspired by Polish writer and playwright Witold Gombrowicz's 1965 fiction mystery novel Cosmos.
Alec Fenton (Stellan Skarsgård), is an American commodities trader living in Athens. He also struggles to find coherence in his radical "pursuit of happiness".
He later leaves his Greek-American wife Marjorie (Charlotte Rampling) for an American coworker named Katherine (Deborah Kara Unger).
Alec then tries to return to her over his guilt. However, Marjorie is more interested in Greek political activist and left-wing journalist Andreas (Dimitris Katalifos), of whom she plans to marry.
Eventually, Alec is under the influence of signs and premonitions with blue being his color, and yellow being the color of Katherine.
The urban chaos of Athens later becomes the catalyst for the struggles between these American expatriates and their Greek hosts.
'Signs & Wonders' was one of the first larger budget films (reportedly $5,000,000) to use digital video (DV) cameras for eventual blowup to 35mm.
For the film, Nossiter had worked with French visual effects artist Tommaso Vergallo.
Vergallo ha been the chief image collaborator on Nossiter's 'Mondovino' ('World of Wine') (2004). He was also one of the founders of blowup pioneer in-house service Swiss Effects Filmproduktion.
For 'Signs & Wonders', he was able to create a textured, 1970s' grainy edge look in the transformation from digital to film.
Shot entirely on location in Athens and the northern region of Epirus in Greece as well as short sequences in Vermont and New York State, 'Signs & Wonders' also marked the return to the big screen of Rampling after several years' hiatus.
The music for the film was composed by English musician and producer Adrian Utley of the English band Portishead.
In February of that same year, 'Signs & Wonders' premiered at the 50th Berlin International Film Festival as the Official Selection. It was later hailed by Cahiers du Cinéma as one of the ten best films of the year.
In August of that same year, American film critic and author Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote: "Though the story is told mainly from Alec’s viewpoint, the film makes it increasingly difficult to identify with him as an authoritative witness, and we find ourselves depending more and more on other characters.
This kind of divided consciousness makes much of the film vibrant and suggestive, but like the contemporary global marketplace, with all its ambiguities, it ultimately saddles the filmmakers with more than they or we can possibly process."
In the United States, 'Signs & Wonders' was released by American theatrical distribution company Strand Releasing the following year in 2001.
In June of that same year, Roger Ebert wrote: "Signs and Wonders" looks through the eyes of a manic-depressive as the world sends him messages and he hurries to answer them.
It shows how exhausting it is to be constantly in the grip of exhilaration, insight, conviction, idealism and excitement--while bombarded all the time with cosmic coincidences.
Nobody in the movie calls this man a manic-depressive, but it's as clear as day--or as the bright yellow suit he turns up wearing one morning, convinced it symbolizes his new and improved psyche.
As a drama about the ravages of mental illness, the movie works; too bad most of the critics read it only as a romantic soap opera in which the hero is an obsessive sap. They read the signs but miss the diagnosis."
Among his credits, Nossiter is also known for directing 'Losing the Thread' (2000), 'Mondovino' ('World of Wine') (2004), and 'Rio Sex Comedy' (2010).
In parallel to his film career, Nossiter, a trained sommelier, has made wine lists and trained staffs for a variety of restaurants in New York, Paris and Rio de Janeiro.
These include Balthazar, “Rice”, “Il Buco” “Man Ray”, “Roberta Sudbrack”, Claude Troisgros and “Aprazivel”.
Along the way, Nossiter also developed a love of wines that rivals his love of movies and has worked as a sommelier in some very fashionable New York City restaurants.
According to his personal life, Nossiter is an American-Brazilian dual national fluent in six languages. He now lives in Rome with his wife, documentary filmmaker Paula Prandini and their three children.
Nossiter has been active from 1990–present.
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