Kent Moorhead

working filmmaker
Kent Moorhead has been a filmmaker for over 35 years, working in both drama & documentary. He now works mostly as a cinematographer, editor & producer/director for documentaries and music videos.

download CV (pdf)

teacher
Kent Moorhead teaches a course in documentary at Kulturama, a film school in Stockholm, Sweden. He will also conduct a documentary workshop during the 2009 Tempo Documentary Film Festival in Stockholm. He has conducted numerous summer workshops in beginning and advanced dramatic film back in his home state of Mississippi.

degree from NYU FILM
Kent Moorhead was trained at New York University's Graduate Institute of TV& Film, receiving his Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in 1981. While at NYU his instructors included Hollywood legends George Cukor and Samuel Fuller, as well as lesser known but skilled film professionals such as Laslo Benedek (Dir-The Wild One), Beda Batka (Czech cameraman), Arnaud Dusseu (writer), & Roberta Hodes (Assistant to Elia Kazan).

Filming "Building Blocks", 2008. Wonderland Productions for Mississippi Public Broadcasting. Kent Moorhead was Director of Photography. The documentary was about rebuilding the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Katrina.

I've always worked in both documentary and drama. Partly that's from my training – NYU built its early reputation on documentary, but by the time I studied there, the focus was on drama. But a documentary sensibility was still present – along with a few documentary courses. I moved back to Mississippi after I finished school. There wasn't a large film community, and you had to learn to be a jack of all trades to survive. In addition to producing and directing my own documentaries and the occasional drama, I got really good at camera and eventually at editing as well. I also worked as an assistant camera on several feature films and was Production Manager for a feature documentary by French Director Bertrand Tavernier. Until the early 90s I worked exclusively in film, both 16mm and 35mm.

Top: DoP on "Standing on My Sisters' Shoulders", 1997.
Top Right: "DoP on Pale in my Shadow", 1996.
Right: DoP on "The Eulogy" in Canada, 1999.
Below: Directing "The Diamond King", 1985.

My early training was a combination of the Golden Era of Hollywood with a dash of Czech and French New Wave. At NYU I was the last generation to be taught by the Hollywood masters of the 30s to 50s film era. The Czech new wave came from my crusty Czech camera teacher and the French influence I got both from film school (the New Wave natural lighting & directing style was really big at NYU in the late 70s) and from working for French Director Bertrand Tavernier on a documentary called "Mississippi Blues". That's where I learned the French version of cinema vérité, which is very different from American direct cinema. I was also trained in 35mm on that film by Tavernier's cameraman – Willie Glen – the same guy who shot "Day for Night" for Truffaut.
I later worked as assistant cameraman to Robert Richardson (who won two Academy Awards) so I experienced the best of the new Hollywood as well.

Below: Filming legendary Mississippi newspaperman George McLean in 1982.
Left to Right: George McLean, Kent Moorhead, Co-producer Vaughn Grisham, Frank Fourney.

To see Kent Moorhead's work, follow the links on the left to his Swedish website, Allt-i-ett Film and
Media (which has recent video clips) or to his US website, Forever Young Productions.