Ken Kelsch

History

Ken Kelsch is an Award Winning Cinematographer/D.O.P. and known for his credit in movies such as Bad Lieutenant and Desert Flower.

Movies

Twisted Tale: The Unmaking of Spookies
Himself
A feature-length, retrospective documentary about the troubled production of 1985's SPOOKIES, which began its life under the title TWISTED SOULS.
The Projectionist
Director of Photography
In his first New York City-set documentary in nearly a decade, filmmaker and provocateur Abel Ferrara uses the experience of one longtime cinema owner to chart the vast changes to the city’s theatrical landscape.
Talking with the Vampires
Director of Photography
Abel Ferrara directed this thirty-minute documentary that interviews the cast of his film THE ADDICTION.
Talking with the Vampires
Abel Ferrara directed this thirty-minute documentary that interviews the cast of his film THE ADDICTION.
The Brooklyn Banker
Director of Photography
The story of Santo Bastucci, a local banker with a rare gift for memorizing numbers; he is unwittingly cast into the forefront of an aging wiseguy's bid for power, Manny "The Hand" Mistera. Santo is caught between the loyalty he has for his cagey father-in-law, Benny, his childhood friend, Basta, and his streetwise uncle, Matteo, the pastor of their Brooklyn church.
Welcome to New York
Director of Photography
George Devereaux, a prominent French politician, lives a life of debauchery, until he is arrested in New York for sexually assaulting a hotel maid.
House of Last Things
Director of Photography
A mind-bending thriller set in Portland, Oregon about an unspoken tragedy and its effects on a house, its temporary caretakers and the owners, a classical music critic and his wife on a recuperative trip to Italy.
4:44 Last Day on Earth
Director of Photography
A look at how a painter and a successful actor spend their last day together before the world comes to an end.
Desert Flower
Director of Photography
The autobiography of a Somalian nomad who was sold in marriage at 13, fled from Africa a while later to become finally an American supermodel and is now at the age of 38, the UN spokeswoman against female genital mutilation.
Sıcak
Director of Photography
Return to Sleepaway Camp
Director of Photography
It's summer camp as usual at Camp Manabe where the kids torment each other for fun while the underpaid camp staff provides as little supervision as possible. Greedy camp owner Frank and junior partner Ronnie do their best to keep everyone in line, but something sinister is about to put a slash in the roster. When campers and staff mysteriously begin disappearing and turning into gruesome corpses, paranoid Ronnie can't shake the memory of a series of grisly murders that took place at Camp Arawak. As the paranoia worsens, Ronnie's list of possible killers starts growing just like the body count. Only one thing is for certain, something is carving a bloody new trail at Sleepaway Camp where kids can be so mean and surviving this summer is gonna be a real killer!
100 Feet
Garbage Man
After Marnie Watson kills her abusive husband in self-defense, she is condemned to house arrest... only to discover that the house is possessed by the enraged and violent spirit of her dead husband.
100 Feet
Director of Photography
After Marnie Watson kills her abusive husband in self-defense, she is condemned to house arrest... only to discover that the house is possessed by the enraged and violent spirit of her dead husband.
Chelsea on the Rocks
Director of Photography
Chelsea on the Rocks celebrates the personalities and artistic voices that have emerged from New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel. Once considered an untouchable, impenetrable tower for writers, artists, musicians and mavericks, it has been recently claimed as a boutique hotel venture for a management company that shows disregard for its formidable history. –Cannes Film Festival
Before It Had a Name
Director of Photography
A young Italian woman inherits from her deceased lover an enigmatic modern house in the New York country side, and goes to see it for the first time. When she arrives she meets the caretaker of the house.
Missing in America
Director of Photography
A haunted Vietnam veteran, living in exile in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, is faced with a life-changing decision after he is visited by a former platoon member and his young Amerasian daughter.
Asmalı Konak: Hayat
Director of Photography
Bahar (Nurgül Yeşilçay) is sent to New York because a serious illness. Treated in hospital Seymen Aga (Özcan Deniz) and Bahar try together to overcome this disease. Seymen Aga trying to be as strong as possible and not to give up. In Kapadokya, where their family and friends, they are waiting for the good news from the U.S..
Testosterone
Director of Photography
Dean has been stumped for some time in his attempt to produce a follow-up to "I was a Teenage Speed Freak," his incredibly successful graphic novel. His fans expect great things from him and his editor, Louise, is hounding him. Instead of working, however, Dean spends his time searching for his Argentine lover Pablo, who went out one night for cigarettes and never came back.
Nowhere to Go But Up
Director of Photography
Val is 23 years old and full of dreams. She travels to New York to become an actress. She is lonely in a strange country, in a strange city, with little money and no friends. In her path, she meets weird people who they, also, seek their dreams but everyday life gets in the way. Tired and hungry she sits on the corner of a building. Across the street a writer whose fantasy has dry out. In an instant she becomes his muse... At the Oscar's night she will be the one with the Golden Globe in her hands.
'R Xmas
Director of Photography
A New York drug dealer is kidnapped, and his wife must try to come up with the money and drugs to free him from his abductors before Christmas.
It Had to Be You
Director of Photography
Sparks fly when Anna Penn and Charlie Hudson meet. Unfortunately, they're both engaged to other people. In fact, they're staying at the same New York City hotel in order to work on wrapping up the last details of their nuptials. Over days and evenings of joint wedding planning, the two grow closer -- and start to wonder if they're getting married to the right people after all.
New Rose Hotel
The Expeditor
A corporate raider and his henchman use a chanteuse to lure a scientific genius away from his employer and family.
New Rose Hotel
Director of Photography
A corporate raider and his henchman use a chanteuse to lure a scientific genius away from his employer and family.
Invisible Child
Director of Photography
A nanny is hired by a troubled mother and finds herself fighting to hold together the entire family when she realizes the woman has an imaginary daughter.
Rear Window
Director of Photography
Jason Kemp is a quadriplegic who passes the time spying on his neighbors from his window. By chance he catches one of them, Julian Thorpe, beating his wife and reports it to the police. He becomes certain that Julian has killed her, but fails to convince his nurse or his friends of any foul play.
Susan's Plan
Casino Pit Boss
Susan wants her reprehensible ex-husband dead and, in several bungled attempts by henchmen, tries to accomplish the deed.
Susan's Plan
Director of Photography
Susan wants her reprehensible ex-husband dead and, in several bungled attempts by henchmen, tries to accomplish the deed.
The Impostors
Director of Photography
Wrongly accused of physically abusing a fellow actor, starving thespians Arthur and Maurice find themselves pursued by the law aboard a cruise ship.
Montana
Director of Photography
A seasoned enforcer is given the seemingly routine task of finding the Boss's runaway mistress, Kitty. However Kitty is involved in plans to overthrow the Boss and this routine task gets very complicated.
A Brooklyn State of Mind
Director of Photography
Al Stanco has lived all of his life in Brooklyn and does some work for the local crime lord, Danny Parente. New to the neighbourhood is Gabriela, a filmmaker shooting a documentary on the real Brooklyn. Al and Gabriela become friendly but the relationship is strained when he discovers her true goal is to expose Parente's criminal activities. When Al sees the evidence Gabriela has uncovered, which implicates Parente in the death of many locals (including Al's own father), he seeks revenge in a dangerous confrontation with his boss.
Every 9 Seconds
Director of Photography
Domestic violence drama, with Gail O'Grady as a distraught young mother, finding herself stalked by her newly paroled ex and armed with a loaded gun, and Ami Pietz as a journalist volunteering at a crisis hotline to do an "inside" story.
Love on the A Train
Director of Photography
Every morning, a married man and his wife enter the subway, buying a newspaper and coffee together before taking separate lines. One day, as the man is standing in the aisle of his train, leaning against the support pole while reading his newspaper, a strange woman touches his hand. She slides his hand down the pole and begins to discreetly pleasure herself with it. The man looks over, only to see that the woman is nonchalantly reading the newspaper, as she continues to pleasure herself with his hand. No words are spoken between them. The next day, the same encounter takes place, with the woman boarding the train and hovering over toward the pole by which the man is standing. This time, his hand is already waiting lower on the pole. These daily, wordless encounters between the man and woman continue over a nine month period.
Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground
Director of Photography
The actual experiences of New York City subway riders are dramatized in a collection of 10 intriguing and very different vignettes. The tales showcase an ensemble of familiar faces, and range from stories of compassion and love to reflections on violence and loss. Among them: a disabled beggar quarrels with a woman and ruins her shoes with his wheelchair, provoking onlookers to wrath and pity; a skittish tourist proves to be her own worst enemy; a newlywed trysts with a mysterious sexpot; a commuter helplessly witnesses a suicide attempt; and, in the most affecting segment, a young woman grieves over her mother's imminent death.
The Blackout
Director of Photography
A debauched Hollywood movie actor tries to piece together one wild night in Miami years earlier which remains a drug-induced blur, and soon finds out that some questions about his past are best left unanswered.
The Prosecutors
Director of Photography
Drama (and prospective pilot) about the lives of three women who work in the New York City DA's office: one a brilliant prosecutor of high-profile cases whose husband is shot and killed in an armed robbery; a second, her tough, bitter, chain-smoking, boozing, wheelchair-bound former mentor; a third, a Latina who is an ambitious legal intern.
Big Night
Director of Photography
Primo and Secondo, two immigrant brothers, pin their hopes on a banquet honoring Louis Prima to save their struggling restaurant.
Killer: A Journal of Murder
Director of Photography
Carl Panzram is sent to Leavenworth Prison for burglary. While there, he is brutally beaten by a guard. Neophyte guard Henry Lesser feels sympathy for Panzram, befriends him, and gets him to write his life story. Lesser learns that Panzram's past is much more violent than he thought, but also that he's capable of being a much better person than the rest of the prison staff believes - or so Lesser thinks.
The Funeral
Director of Photography
The story concerns the funeral of one of three brothers in a family of gangsters that lived in New York in 1930s. Details of the past of the brothers and their families are shown through a series of flashbacks.
Mylène Farmer: California
Director of Photography
Short film release
Condition Red
Director of Photography
Prison guard falls in love with inmate. She wants him to let her escape.
The Addiction
Director of Photography
A vampiric doctoral student tries to follow the philosophy of a nocturnal comrade and control her thirst for blood.
Drop Squad
Director of Photography
Controversial film about an underground organization that kidnaps and 'deprograms' African Americans who sell out or deny their cultural heritage. Spike Lee is the Executive Producer.
Assault at West Point: The Court-Martial of Johnson Whittaker
Director of Photography
The story of Johnson Whittaker, one of the first African-American cadets admitted to West Point. Tied down and beaten by his fellow cadets
Dangerous Game
Director of Photography
A New York film director, working on his latest movie in Los Angeles, begins to reflect the actions in his movie and real life, especially when he begins an affair with the lead actress.
Bad Lieutenant
Director of Photography
While investigating a young nun's rape, a corrupt New York City police detective, with a serious drug and gambling addiction, tries to change his ways and find forgiveness.
Spookies
Director of Photography
Taking a wrong turn, travelers find themselves trapped in a mysterious house. One horror after another threatens them as the sorcerer who lives within needs sacrifices to give eternal life to his beautiful bride.
Don't Go in the House
As a child, Donald was tormented by his mother who used fire as a punishment. Now a deranged adult, Donald stalks women at clubs, then takes them home where he kills them with a flamethrower.
The Driller Killer
Director of Photography
An artist slowly goes insane while struggling to pay his bills, work on his paintings, and care for his two female roommates, which leads him taking to the streets of New York after dark and randomly killing derelicts with a power drill.
Manson Girls
Director of Photography
About the female devotees who joined Manson's flock in the 1960s and helped carry out brutal killings meant to start an apocalyptic race war.