Emre Ozdemir was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. He finished high school at Haddonfield Memorial HS in New Jersey and received a BFA in Film / Digital Video from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. His thesis film Urva won Best Student Film at the 2010 New Jersey Film Festival, and Director's Choice Award at the 2010 Black Maria Film Festival. Urva has screened at a number of festivals including New Filmmakers, NY at the Anthology Film Archives and National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. In 2011, he started a production company to pursue independent filmmaking. Emre currently works as a director, assistant director, freelance videographer.
Artist's Statement
The intangibility of cinematic images and their correlation to memories fascinate me and I intend to exploit this relation in my work. I had been trying to pace my dreams since my childhood and filmmaking allows me to do this. I am interested in what's left lingering in the back of the mind when contrasting images and sound clash on the screen. I start every new project trying to hear the distant sound of the piece far in the background of the frantic pacing of modern life and let it unfold its own form. I like to think of filmmaking as humbly gathering wood for a primitive fire, which is the light of cinema.