Elias Merhige, a native to Brooklyn, New York, received his bachelor of fine arts in motion picture directing from State University New York. A gifted student, he dove into film quickly with the feature Begotten. The fantasy film zeroed in on the heavens, with the death of God and birth of Mother Earth. Doing just about everything from directing and writing, to producing and editing, his hard work was rewarded when it was listed among the top ten films of 1991 by Time magazine.
He is best known to mainstream audiences for the 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire, and to underground audiences for the cult-classic 1991 film Begotten.
In 2004 Merhige directed Suspect Zero, the first feature film to include remote viewing as an essential aspect of the story-line. The DVD’s extra features include interviews with people who worked with the US military and intelligence agencies as part of those programs.
Besides directing, Merhige has lectured on aesthetics at the Carnegie Mellon Museum and the American Film Institute in Washington, D.C.
