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According to Kurt Cobain, Daniel Johnston was the greatest songwriter on earth. Musician, cult outsider artist and manic depressive, Daniel Johnston's wild behavioural fluctuations, downward-spirals and delusions of grandeur have ensured that he remains an enigma to the music industry, but to others he is simply an unrewarded genius.
As a reclusive teenager, Johnston showed signs of unusual artistic ability, creating intuitive super-8 films and expressive comic-book-style drawings in the basement of his family home. After falling out with his fundamentalist Christian family, he literally ran off to join a carnival, before landing in Austin, Texas, broke and alone. It was here that he began to hone his musical career. But just as he was making a name for himself locally, Johnston's inner demons began to take hold. Featuring interviews with Johnston and those closest to him - as well as amazing concert and home super-8 footage - [The Devil and Daniel Johnston] is a stunning portrait of this troubled artist, and the winner of the Director's Award for Documentary at Sundance. --- D Jeff Feuerzeig P Henry S. Rosenthal WS Complex Corporation TD video/col, B&W/2005/109mins
Jeff Feuerzeig was born in New Jersey, USA. His films are [Jon Hendricks: The Freddie Sessions] (1990), [Half Japanese: The Band that Would be King] (1994).