Bill Daniel

Bill Daniel (born 1959) is an American experimental documentary film artist, photographer, film editor, and cinematographer. He is also an installation artist, curator, and former zine publisher. His full-length film, Who is Bozo Texino? about the tradition of hobo and railworker boxcar graffiti was completed in 2005 and has screened extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Daniel has collaborated with several artists from the Bay Area Mission School art movement, notably Margaret Kilgallen and has worked on multiple projects with underground director Craig Baldwin. Film/video artist Rankin Renwick of the Oregon Department of Kick Ass has been a frequent touring partner, collaborator and co-curator.

In 2008, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for film.

Background Daniel was born in Houston; he has lived and worked in Austin, New York, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Portland and Shreveport. He attended college at the University of Texas at Austin where he majored in marketing. His brother Lee Daniel is also a cinematographer.

Selected films and installations A wide variety of locations have served as venues for Bill Daniel's film and installation works, from urban rooftops and abandoned drive-in movie theaters to Jonas Mekas' Anthology Film Archives and the Independent Film Channel. A quite select listing of the numerous locations Daniel has screened his films at (in person) includes Center for Documentary Studies in Durham NC, Houston's Aurora Picture Show, Mini-Cine in Shreveport, the Los Angeles Film Forum, the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco, Space 1026 in Philadelphia, Deitch Projects in NYC, and the New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles.

Who is Bozo Texino? (2005)

This 55 min. experimental documentary film was shot primarily in black and white 8mm and 16mm film and was subsequently digitally edited. With a goal of tracing the true identity behind Bozo Texino, whose iconic hand-drawn cowboy moniker has appeared on the sides of trains for nearly a century, Bill Daniel hopped boxcars with drifters and camped in hobo jungles, all the while collecting stories and images of a little-known American folk art tradition.