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Mark Borchardt

Mark Borchardt (born 1966) is an American independent filmmaker. He is best known as the subject of American Movie: The Making of Northwestern (1999), a film that documented two of the three and a half years he spent writing, shooting and editing his horror short, Coven (1997).

Borchardt is born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He started making films at the age of fourteen with a super-8 camera that he bought from a garage sale for $40. After serving three years in the military he continued his cinematic endeavors at the local university. In the mid-nineties he wrote and produced Halloween radio dramas which were broadcast annually and won a fellowship from the Milwaukee Art Futures Board. Filmmakers Chris Smith and Sarah Price began filming Borchardt while he was attempting to put together funding for his unfinished feature Northwestern; after the project collapsed, Borchardt decided to instead finish Coven, which he had started years earlier. After Coven was completed, Smith and Price compiled their footage into American Movie, which was picked up by Sony Classics and won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.

Since then, Borchardt has made five appearances on Late Show with David Letterman (1993) and has appeared in several movies including The One (2001/I) with Jet Li and the Ramzi Abed film, The Tunnel (2001) with Lloyd Kaufman. He has contributed to the forthcoming book, "The Independent Film Experience" and is beginning to get his short stories published in magazines. He recently played himself in a cameo appearance on the popular television cartoon series Family Guy, along with friend and American Movie co-star Mike Schank. He and Mike have their own series on Zero TV, Mark and Mike. Mark & Mike hosted a national television special called Night of the Living Dead: LIVE from Wisconsin on Halloween night, 2006. Mark also stars in the film Modus Operandi, directed by Frankie Latina. He and Mike play the Gravediggers in a partially animated comedy called Hamlet A.D.D.

Currently he is working on Scare Me, which is scheduled for release in 2008.

• Mark Borchardt at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview at Brew City Magazine