MARK PELLINGTON is a filmmaker based in New York City and Los Angeles. A native of Baltimore, Pellington attended the University of Virginia where in 1984 he earned a B.A. in Rhetoric. Upon graduation he joined MTV's award winning On-Air Promotions Department where he developed a series of short conceptual spots combining and editing original live action footage with sound/image/text juxtaposition. This technique became a primary focus of Pellington's work.
While at MTV Pellington branched out as a freelance music video director completing clips for Information Society, Malcolm McLaren, and De La Soul among others. He also ventured into the art world, collaborating in text image pieces with New York gallery artist Jenny Holzer.
In 1988 Pellington developed an idea for non-linear collage program. Created in partnership with MTV Europe producer/director Jon Klein, "Buzz" was an ambitious thirteen-part global series commissioned by MTV and channel 4 (UK). Hailed by critics as ground-breaking adventurous television, "Buzz" was the logical culmination of Pellington's MTV career.
Upon completing "Buzz" Pellington refined his unique personal vision through a distinct series of TV and video projects. He is internationally recognized as one of the top music video directors. His clip for Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" is one of the most popular in history, as well as one of the most honored; he was named Best Director at the 1992 Billboard Video Music Awards, and the clip picked up four 1993 MTV Video Music Awards including Best Director and Video of the Year.
His clips for such noted rock, pop and rap performers as U2, PM Dawn, Crystal Waters, Public Enemy and Alice in Chains form a serious and much-imitated body of work. A piece for INXS entitled "Beautiful Girl," is a provocative visual essay on the female body which earned a Grammy nomination. With his video for the Jungle Brothers' "I Get A Kick Out Of You," Pellington joined Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmush and Jonathan Demme as one of the elite group of directors chosen for "Red, Hot and Blue," a landmark AIDS special shown on ABC and later released as a home video.
Pellington brought his commentary on television and distinctive media manipulation techniques to large stadiums around the world when he created the multi-screen image environment for U2's highly acclaimed "Zoo TV" tour.
He also served as creative director on an experimental multi-media project for the Spanish exhibition at World Expo '92 in Seville, Spain. "The Memory Palace" is a five-screen live-action film evocation of cyberspace made in collaboration with science fiction writer Williams Gibson, Spanish performance group La Fura Dels Baus, "Buzz" director Mark Neale, artist Julia Heyward and musicians Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel.
Outside the music field, Pellington has further developed his eye for documentary and narrative. "Words In Your Face," a half hour film he created for PBS's prestigious series "Alive From off Center," anticipated the current mania for spoken word poetry with high-energy precognition. A half-hour television poem, "Words" featured John Leguizamo, KRS-ONE and Henry Rollins, and was chosen as one of six U. S. entries at the 1992 input festival.
He also collaborated with Obie-award winning director David Gordon and music producer Hal Willner on a half-hour live action cartoon called "Punch and Judy Get Divorced" for the PBS series "Alive TV."
Pelligton's views about filmmaking took a profound turn in 1993 when he created his personal work to date, a 30-minute film for PBS called "Father's Daze," in which the director comes to terms with his own father's suffering from Alzheimer's disease. This intense, impressionistic diary was screened at the Berlin, Montreal and Rotterdam Film Festivals and was praised by critics worldwide.
His in-depth, compressive "The United States of Poetry" was a five-part series for PBS which took a year and a half to complete. In the program, Pellington takes the viewer on an eye-opening, cross-country journey through end-of-the-century America, guided by 72 poets and spoken word artists, a diverse array of witnesses to our time. They range from school children to cowboys, Beat poets to poet laureates, musicians Lou Reed to Leonard Cohen, housewives to the homeless and the person in the street.
In 1997, Pellington's independent film directorial debut "Going All The Way" bowed at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by Gramercy Pictures. He followed that with "Destination Anywhere," a short film he created for MTV starring Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Bon Jovi and Kevin Bacon. He later directed James Earl Jones in an episode of the dramatic television series "Homicide."
His second feature, "Arlington Road," a dark political thriller starring Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins, was released by Screen Gems in the summer of 1999.
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