Trent Harris (born June 9, 1952) is an American filmmaker based in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2013, IndieWire proclaimed Harris "The Best Underground Filmmaker You Don’t Know — But Should."

Harris' films have been featured at various festivals and museums worldwide, including renowned venues like Sundance, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the British Film Institute in London, the Edinburgh Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna Austria, Les Laboratories in Aubervilliers France, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.

Career

Harris taught film and screenwriting classes at the University of Utah and worked as a documentarian and television journalist. He wrote and directed six feature films, many experimental movies, and more than one hundred documentaries for PBS, National Geographic, NBC, and others. which stars Richard Dutcher and Alex Caldiero.

In 2015, he was the subject of a documentary called Beaver Trilogy Part IV, narrated by Bill Hader, which examined his The Beaver Trilogy film and his relationship with its star, Richard Griffiths.

Harris' web series Echo People is a spin-off of Rubin and Ed.

Harris has written three books: The Wild Goose Chronicles, Fate Is A Hairy Rodent, and Mondo Utah.

Filmmaking Style

Harris compares his style to two directors, Michelangelo Antonioni and Ed Wood.

Filmography

Feature films

  • Rubin and Ed (1991)
  • Plan 10 from Outer Space (1994)
  • The Beaver Trilogy (2000)
  • The Cement Ball of Earth, Heaven, and Hell (2003)
  • Delightful Water Universe (2008)
  • The Wild Goose Chronicles (2009)
  • Luna Mesa (2011)
  • Welcome to the Rubber Room (2017)
  • Echo People (2021)

Short films

  • Subway (1975)
  • The Beaver Kid (1979)
  • The Beaver Kid 2 (1981)
  • The Orkly Kid (1985)
  • Burning Man (1997)

References

Sources

  • Trent Harris Films, Official website
  • Luna Mesa (hosts films)
  • Vlog
  • Trent Harris Independent Film Collection

; Archives

; Interview

  • Plum TV Telluride Interviews Trent Harris at Sundance