Steve Hanft

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Steve Hanft is an American independent film director.

Steve Hanft started making films at the age of 13 as a young surf punk growing up in Ventura, California. His first films were surfer style, or just straight nature films, then later became more Dali influenced surrealist style. As a young man Steve was accepted to the prestigious California Institute of the Arts Film School where he studied avant guard filmmaking from great artists/teachers like James Benning and Monte Hellman, and Stan Brakhage. While at Cal Arts Steve won several grants including the Kodak Cinematography Award, and the Princess Grace Film Grant. But the grants weren't quite enough to pay for the amount of 16 mm film he was shooting. So Hanft went ahead and opened a casino, "Festival of Sin" in the school basement, where he held dances, live entertainment, and gambling. It wasn't long before "Festival of Sin" became a real swinging nightclub and Steve began making some pretty decent money. With the casino cash flowing Steve was able to shoot several films there including his masters thesis "Kill the Moonlight". The film was an experimental narrative with non actors in the leading roles, but very original, sort of an existential study of a loser race car driver called "Chance". Around that time, just finishing "Kill the Moonlight" Steve met the folk singer named Beck. As they recorded and played music together Beck was inspired enough to write a song about the main character "Chance" from "Kill the Moonlight". Beck called the song "Loser" and put a couple of samples of "Chance" in the song. After "Loser" became a smash hit, Hanft directed the video and that became a hit. "Loser" was Steve's first of several number one videos on MTV and launched a career for him. Since then Hanft has directed over seventy music videos including ones for the Cure, Stone Roses, Delinquent Habits, Primal Scream, and Spoon. He still directs music videos but lately has been focusing on his filmmaking and has made several films including "Southlander", "Strange Parallel", and a new documentary feature entitled "Return of the Rub-a-Dub". As of late Steve has also been producing and starring in several short videos which are the latest craze on internet sites like Youtube, including the hit Cannes Film Festival Bronze Lion Winner "Guy Catches Glasses With Face". Steve has also recently released his third musical album, a collaboration with April March entitled Magic Monsters.