Home : Iraq Film Project : Speakers : Philip Haas
Director of the film The Situation
Philip Haas directed and co-wrote the Oscar-nominated ANGELS & INSECTS, starring Kristin Scott Thomas, which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and was the top-grossing U.S. independent film the year it was released. He has directed four other feature films, including THE MUSIC OF CHANCE, which he also co-wrote, starring James Spader, Mandy Patinkin, Charles Durning and Joel Grey, UP AT THE VILLA, with Sean Penn, Anne Bancroft, Derek Jacobi and Kristin Scott Thomas, and THE SITUATION, the first U.S. feature film dealing with the war, set exclusively in Iraq, which opened in February, 2007.
For cable television, he directed THE LATHE OF HEAVEN, starring James Caan, Lukas Haas, Lisa Bonet and David Strathairn.
Retrospectives of Philip Haas' documentaries (ten films, all dealing with contemporary visual artists, ranging from David Hockney to Australian aboriginal ground painters) have been held at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York, the Tate Gallery in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. These documentaries have also played on television throughout the world. Philip Haas was awarded a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation for his documentary film work.
He has a B.A. from Harvard and is currently teaching film at Princeton.