William Tyler Smith is an international award-winning writer/director, producer and photographer, who has worked on both documentary and narrative features in film and TV. Smith directed Kiss Me Again, which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival as part of the New York Feature Film Competition and starred Jeremy London (Mallrats, Party of Five), Darrel Hammond (SNL), Elisa Donovan (Clueless) and Katheryn Winnick (Failure to Launch). Kiss Me Again also screened at the Berkshire International Film Festival, Zurich Film Festival and Moscow American Independent Festival of Film. It was theatrically released in New York and distributed on DVD in the U.S. and internationally.
His short films, Lloyd, Elise & Jennifer and New York. Interior-Night have been widely screened across the U.S. and abroad, including Ankara, Bilbao, Bombay, Valencia, Malta, Naples, Czechoslovakia and Barcelona, receiving numerous awards along the way. Upon seeing Interior-Night Doors keyboardist, Ray Manzarek called Smith “extremely talented”, which led to Smith’s first feature documentary The Third Mind, about the artistic fusion between Manzarek and beat poet, Michael McClure. The Third Mind had its successful international premiere at the Venice Film Festival in Italy, its U.S. premiere at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and was broadcast on the Sundance Channel and soon after was picked up for distribution by Mystic Fire Video (Winstar). Kevin Thomas, film critic for the Los Angeles Times, called The Third Mind, “an incisive and engaging exploration…” and further “The Third Mind has lots of energy and style, and it is an altogether stimulating work.”
Smith’s two critically acclaimed experimental videos, A Voice From The Streets and Bari-Ellen, Can You Hear Me? led him to join UCLA’s graduate filmmaking program, where he was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards such as the Lew Wasserman Fellowship. Smith’s mentor at UCLA, Hungarian director, Gyula Gazdag, selected Smith to share camera operating duties on the documentary about Allen Ginsberg, A Poet On The Lower East Side.
Believing strongly in the concept of inspirational education, Smith has taught filmmaking at UCLA and currently teaches directing at the New York Film Academy. He is also in development on the narrative feature version of Imagine A School… Summerhill, which he wrote with fellow filmmaker Julian Hoxter, to be produced by M.E.G.A. Films with Scottish director Gillies MacKinnon attached to direct. Smith and Hoxter have also formed a production company, 418 Films, Ltd.
