Paul Bishow has been making movies since the seventies. His super-8 features are often wild trips through his off-beat humor and serious intellect. Moving back and forth between New York and Charleston, SC, and finally settling in Washington, DC in 1978, Bishow let his characters arise out of the ones he met along the way.

In 1979, he made the super-8 concert film, Anarchy-Chaos Tour Prelude: DC to Bad Brains. That movie marked a new era of punk and post-modern investigations, from rewinding super-8 cartridges in order to multiple expose super-8 in-camera to editing out the pauses between words in scenes to play semiology class. During the next decade, Paul worked with filmmakers Pam Kray, Pierre DeVaux, and John Hagelhorst, to hold the I Am Eye open forum film series which screened experimental and other films, local and international. Also during this period, he produced several short as well as feature experimental films, and he continued in the nineties to expand his repertoire with more award-winning experimental films (House that Dripped Blood) and music videos (the Grandsons: Breaking Your Family’s Rules).

His latest feature, It’s a Wonderful Horrible Life, returns with some old characters acting out in near family entertainment. During the 80’s and 90’s Paul was Director of Photography for his brother Pat Bishow’s 16mm horror features. Bishow lives in Washington, DC, still, where, over the years, he has also been a projectionist and manager of a movie theatre, taught art to middle school pre-teens, and lent his skills to many up and coming filmmakers in the community.

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