Bill Kirstein

Movies

Mean Girls
Director of Photography
New student Cady Heron is welcomed into the top of the social food chain by the elite group of popular girls called ‘The Plastics,’ ruled by the conniving queen bee Regina George and her minions Gretchen and Karen. However, when Cady makes the major misstep of falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels, she finds herself prey in Regina’s crosshairs. As Cady sets to take down the group’s apex predator with the help of her outcast friends Janis and Damian, she must learn how to stay true to herself while navigating the most cutthroat jungle of all: high school.
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Playing the Piano 2022
Cinematography
On December 11, 2022, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s solo piano performance will be streamed in the form of a concert. However, what we will experience that day is carefully recorded footage of Sakamoto performing a few pieces of music each day over the course of a week, that was then thoughtfully edited together. This is last performance.
Fragments of Paradise
Director of Photography
For over 70 years, Jonas Mekas, internationally known as the "godfather" of avant-garde cinema, documented his life in what came to be known as his diary films. From his arrival in New York City as a displaced person in 1949 to his death in 2019, he chronicled the trauma and loss of exile while pioneering institutions to support the growth of independent film in the United States. Fragments of Paradise is an intimate look at his life and work constructed from thousands of hours of his own video and film diaries-including never-before-seen tapes and unpublished audio recordings. It is a story about finding beauty amidst profound loss, and a man who tried to make sense of it all... with a camera.
Sisters with Transistors
Director of Photography
Think of early electronic music and you’ll likely see men pushing buttons, knobs, and boundaries. While electronic music is often perceived as a boys' club, the truth is that from the very beginning women have been integral in inventing the devices, techniques and tropes that would define the shape of sound for years to come.
Almost a Year
Cinematography
As the coronavirus pandemic progresses, the overlapping routines of three New Yorkers change unexpectedly.
The Soul of America
Director of Photography
Writer, journalist, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer John Meacham offers his timely and invaluable insights into the country’s current political and historical moment by examining its past. Based on his 2018 bestseller of the same name.
Marriage Story
Producer
An auto-fiction under the eyes of a female Christ, a marriage as a step into the forbidden land of the holy, a lesbian poem in the language of the divine, a paean to the color red, the world's slowest rave.
The Chicken
Director of Photography
On an unseasonably hot day in November, Hiro, a Japanese immigrant in New York City, decides to butcher a live chicken for dinner. While showing his visiting cousin Kei around, the pair encounter a medical emergency on the street. After they mishandle the situation and end up causing more harm than good, Hiro cannot bring himself to kill the chicken. Throughout, Kei observes his cousin’s new lifestyle as Hiro and his pregnant wife prepare for their move to Chinatown. As the day wears on, Hiro and Kei’s actions highlight how their lives are complicit in the structural violence that surrounds them.
So Pretty
Director of Photography
Four young queers in New York City struggle to maintain their proto-utopian community against the outside world as their lives curiously merge with the 1980s German novel "So schön" by Ronald M. Schernikau.
So Pretty
Producer
Four young queers in New York City struggle to maintain their proto-utopian community against the outside world as their lives curiously merge with the 1980s German novel "So schön" by Ronald M. Schernikau.
Common Structure
Director
Amongst fragmentary recollections of friendship and the sublime, two friends explore changing priorities in a world that is quickly slipping away.
Fuck Work
Director of Photography
Identity and performance, resistance and submission, and monotony and quiet rage crash into one another in this clear-eyed vision of a lesbian working as a professional dominatrix with a police officer as a regular client.
BEYONCÉ
Director
BEYONCÉ is the fifth studio album by American singer Beyoncé. It was released on December 13, 2013 through Parkwood Entertainment and Columbia Records. Developed as a "visual album", Beyoncé's songs are accompanied by non-linear short films that illustrate the musical concepts conceived during production. Its dark and intimate subject material includes feminist themes of sex, monogamous love, and relationship issues, inspired by Beyoncé's desire to assert her full creative freedom.
Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream
Producer
Life Is But a Dream is a HBO documentary about the life of US singer Beyoncé Knowles during the years 2011 and 2012 and on the recording of her fifth album. The film was directed by Beyoncé herself. The film shows Beyoncé from intimate moments of her pregnancy to behind the scenes and rehearsals of the main concerts of that time.