Movie Secter
David Secter
Professional Biography
DAVID SECTER is an award-winning writer/producer/director of narrative and documentary feature films, TV specials and theater events. His latest picture Take The Flame! Gay Games: Grace, Grit & Glory (TakeTheFlame.Net), a doc feature on the history of The Gay Games and founder, Olympian Dr. Tom Waddell, narrated by Greg Louganis, won rave reviews at major festivals and is currently screening in theaters, on television and DVD worldwide. Secter is now adapting Waddell’s story as a narrative feature: An All American Family. He produced pilots for Rendezvous, a proposed series of monthly arts specials: Pacific Passions, shot at the Festival of Pacific Arts in New Caledonia, and BURN, a two-hour two-year account of the Burning Man Arts Festival, now showing on the Discovery Channel in Europe. His latest narrative movie is CyberDorm, an offbeat campus webcasting comedy.
Secter began his film career with Love With The Proper Guppy, a satirical short sold to The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His first feature Winter Kept Us Warm, made while he was a student at The University of Toronto, was the first English Canadian feature selected for The Cannes Film Festival and won awards in Amsterdam and Montreal. His next movie The Offering was nominated for a Canadian Film Award as Best Picture of the Year, screened on national network television, and released theatrically by Columbia Pictures, who also distributed his family featurette The Harrowing Tale of the Haunted Lighthouse.
In New York City Secter founded Total Impact, a co-op media company active in a wide range of film, theater and television productions. He wrote, produced and directed the innovative comedy Feelin’ Up (aka Getting Together), released theatrically by Troma and on video by Vestron, which remains a cult favorite. His television credits include music specials with such stars as Eartha Kitt and Talking Heads, travel series like The Pocono Show, numerous comedies, arts programs, documentaries and commercials, such as The Guinness World Records Hall, selected as a National Clio Award Finalist as Year's Best Entertainment Production. For eight years as CEO and Artistic Director of EnterMedia, a Manhattan arts center, Secter produced and presented Obie Award-winning plays, music, dance and other events in a historic 1100 seat playhouse and several smaller theaters. One landmark project was American Mavericks, the first touring festival of US independent movies. EnterMedia launched such long-running Broadway musical hits as The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Among additional theater credits, Secter wrote the book and lyrics and produced the celebrated Off-Broadway musical Get Thee To Canterbury, and created an original Civil War docudramusical Banjos & Bugles.
Now in California, Secter is in pre-production on An All American Family, continues work on Rendezvous, celebrating arts and travel discoveries, as he develops other theatrical, television and internet projects. He is the subject of The Best of Secter & The Rest of Secter, a doc feature by his nephew Joel Secter (BestOfSecter.com), which opened to exceptional reviews on the festival circuit, screened in prime time on the Sundance Channel and CBC networks, and was selected as Best Documentary at Canada’s Whistler Film Festival. An interview with David is included in Matthew Hays’s seminal new book The View From Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers, and his biography also appears in various editions of Who's Who in Media, Who's Who in Entertainment and Who's Who in America.
Secter began his film career with Love With The Proper Guppy, a satirical short sold to The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His first feature Winter Kept Us Warm, made while he was a student at The University of Toronto, was the first English Canadian feature selected for The Cannes Film Festival and won awards in Amsterdam and Montreal. His next movie The Offering was nominated for a Canadian Film Award as Best Picture of the Year, screened on national network television, and released theatrically by Columbia Pictures, who also distributed his family featurette The Harrowing Tale of the Haunted Lighthouse.
In New York City Secter founded Total Impact, a co-op media company active in a wide range of film, theater and television productions. He wrote, produced and directed the innovative comedy Feelin’ Up (aka Getting Together), released theatrically by Troma and on video by Vestron, which remains a cult favorite. His television credits include music specials with such stars as Eartha Kitt and Talking Heads, travel series like The Pocono Show, numerous comedies, arts programs, documentaries and commercials, such as The Guinness World Records Hall, selected as a National Clio Award Finalist as Year's Best Entertainment Production. For eight years as CEO and Artistic Director of EnterMedia, a Manhattan arts center, Secter produced and presented Obie Award-winning plays, music, dance and other events in a historic 1100 seat playhouse and several smaller theaters. One landmark project was American Mavericks, the first touring festival of US independent movies. EnterMedia launched such long-running Broadway musical hits as The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Among additional theater credits, Secter wrote the book and lyrics and produced the celebrated Off-Broadway musical Get Thee To Canterbury, and created an original Civil War docudramusical Banjos & Bugles.
Now in California, Secter is in pre-production on An All American Family, continues work on Rendezvous, celebrating arts and travel discoveries, as he develops other theatrical, television and internet projects. He is the subject of The Best of Secter & The Rest of Secter, a doc feature by his nephew Joel Secter (BestOfSecter.com), which opened to exceptional reviews on the festival circuit, screened in prime time on the Sundance Channel and CBC networks, and was selected as Best Documentary at Canada’s Whistler Film Festival. An interview with David is included in Matthew Hays’s seminal new book The View From Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers, and his biography also appears in various editions of Who's Who in Media, Who's Who in Entertainment and Who's Who in America.
