Susan SeidelmanDirector
Susan Seidelman began her directorial career in the 1980s when her low budget film Smithereens became the first American Independent film accepted into the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It went on to garner awards at several major international festivals and is currently distributed by the “Criterion Collection”. Susan’s next endeavor Desperately Seeking Susan (starring Madonna and Rosanna Arquette) was a critical and commercial success that helped launch the screen careers of many emerging actors of that time, including Aidan Quinn and John Turturro. The film premiered at Cannes in 1985, was nominated for a French Cesar for Best Foreign Film and voted one of the top 100 films of all times by the BBC. Seidelman went on to direct John Malkovich in Making Mr. Right; Peter Falk, Emily Lloyd, Dianne Wiest and Jerry Lewis in the mafia comedy Cookie, written by Nora Ephron; Roseanne Barr and Meryl Streep (in her first comedic screen performance) in She-Devil; Judy Davis, Marcia Gay Harden and Juliette Lewis in the gender-bending comedy Gaudi Afternoon, and Mira Sorvino in The Dutch Master which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Dramatic Short. Directing the pilot and early episodes of HBO’s hit series Sex and the City are among the highlights of Seidelman’s TV career, which also includes two EMMY nominations for her Showtime movie A Cooler Climate, starring Sally Field and Judy Davis, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman. In 2006 Susan wrote and directed Boynton Beach Club, a romantic comedy set in a Florida retirement community, starring Dyan Cannon, Sally Kellerman and Brenda Vaccaro. The film premiered at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and was subsequently distributed by the Samuel Goldwyn Company/Roadside Attractions. Seidelman also directed Musical Chairs, a Manhattan love story set against the backdrop of a wheelchair ballroom dance competition. The film received a GLAAD Media Award and an Astaire Award nomination for Best Dance Film of 2012. More recently, Susan directed the comedy The Hot Flashes starring Brooke Shields, Daryl Hannah, Virginia Madsen, Wanda Sykes and Eric Roberts.
