Randal Kleiser

guest of honor

Randal Kleiser has been an internationally known film director since the release of his first feature Grease. Other features include The Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields, Summer Lovers with Peter Gallagher and Daryl Hannah, Grandview U.S.A. with Jamie Lee Curtis, Flight of the Navigator, featuring the first use of reflectance mapping in a motion picture, Big Top Pee Wee, and White Fang starring Ethan Hawke. In London he directed the critically acclaimed comedy Getting It Right starring Lynn Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sir John Gielgud. In 1996 he wrote and directed It's My Party, starring Eric Roberts, Lee Grant, Bruce Davidson, Marlee Matlin, Margaret Cho, George Segal, and Olivia Newton-John. His television movies include The Boy in the Plastic Bubble with John Travolta, and the Emmy Award-winning The Gathering. His USC master's thesis film, Peege, launched his professional career and was selected by the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2007. He has taught graduate directing students at USC and a Master Directing Classes at film festivals in Europe. George Lucas and Kleiser produced The Nina Foch Course for Filmmakers and Actors, an instructional video based on Foch’s USC class for aspiring actors, writers and filmmakers. Kleiser has always been interested in cutting edge technology. Working in 70mm 3-D, he directed Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, which ran for over a decade at the Disney Parks in Anaheim, Orlando, Tokyo, and Paris. This led to the US Government signing him to develop a virtual reality simulator to train soldiers to deal with Improvised Explosive Devices in the Middle East. Continuing in new media, Kleiser wrote and directed the Virtual Reality series Defrost, featuring Carl Weathers, Bruce Davison and Harry Hamlin, which was shown at the Sundance and Cannes. In 2020 he won the Advanced Imaging Society's Lumiere Award for Best Use of Augmented Reality in a Musical Experience for Intel and Paramount's Grease XR. The project was volumetrically captured using 90 cameras. Kleiser has served on the Sci Tech Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. At the Directors Guild of America, Kleiser chairs the annual Digital Day presentation and inaugurated a videoconferencing program to connect university film classes with working directors.

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