Dean Mermell

Dean Mermell Director/Producer Born in Toronto, Canada and raised in Los Angeles, Dean Mermell has been active in the San Francisco media arts since 1996. His films span a unique range, from contemporary silent narratives to documentaries about outsider artists and fringe characters. His short silent films have won numerous awards from festivals such as San Francisco International, Moondance, and the California Independent Film Festival, and have also screened at the Mill Valley film festival and SF IndieFest. His documentary film Twelve Pianos is about Mauro ffortissimo, and artist and musician who dragged an old piano onto the bluffs near his home on the California Coast, and started a kind of cultural revolution in the process. Twelve Pianos is streaming on Amazon and Google Play. Dean's previous documentary feature, The Eye of Rudra, profiles the late artist Pepe Ozan, and the mad opera he produced at the Burning Man festival. In the words of festival founder, the late Larry Harvey, it is "probably the best documentary ever about Burning Man."