Joel DeMott

• Name — Joel DeMott • Born — 22 April 1947 • Birthplace — Washington, D.C., U.S. • Died — 13 June 2025 • Place of death — Montgomery, Alabama, U.S. • Occupation — Documentary filmmaker • Education — Radcliffe College • Years Active — 1970s–1980s

DeMott was born on April 22, 1947, in Washington, DC, and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father, Benjamin DeMott, was a cultural critic and professor at Amherst College. Joel was named for the character Jo March from Little Women, one of her mother's favorite books. She attended public school in Amherst before attending an English school in Portugal for a "happy year," and what she described as a "girls’ cloister in Northampton" for "three miserable years". DeMott earned a bachelor's degree in English at Radcliffe College, graduating in 1967. In her own words, she had an "unspectacular academic career" and "spent most of the time directing plays." After college, she hitchhiked around Europe and the southern United States and worked various jobs: teaching high school English literature and Greek history, hotel chambermaid, grading economics papers, and worked briefly as an assistant at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. For several years worked at The New York Times, including as assistant to Seymour Peck. She also lived in Northern Ireland. In 1972, she studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a special student in filmmaking, taking classes with the documentary filmmakers Richard Leacock and Ed Pincus. In equipment room at MIT, she met Jeff Kreines, who would become her partner in life and filmmaking. She then worked as a film editor for WCVB-TV in Boston and in a printing plant as a stitcher. After earning enough money to buy a camera, she left those jobs.

DeMott and Kreines shot their first film together, Vince and Mary Ann Get Married, about a mafia wedding in Cicero, Illinois. Ed Pincus said the film was "one of the most beautiful documentaries ever." Kreines was hired by factory worker and first-time director Donald G. Jackson as cameraman for his feature The Demon Lover (1976), a low budget horror film which would shoot in Michigan. Kreines and DeMott drove to Michigan, and DeMott documented the journey and production in her second film Demon Lover Diary, which was released in 1980. The film was praised by critics and won the 1980 Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Independent/Experimental Film and Video Award, sharing the prize with Journeys From Berlin by Yvonne Rainer, a category which was introduced that year. The duo's third film, Seventeen, followed teenagers during their senior year, 1980-1981, at Muncie Southside High School in Muncie, Indiana. The film was scheduled to be the final part of the PBS documentary television series Middletown on life in Muncie, created and produced by Peter Davis, airing as the final episode in 1982. However, the series' sponsor, Xerox, withdrew their support for the episode after seeing a three minute trailer for the film. DeMott and Kreines refused to bleep profanity and remove scenes that contained interracial romance. Under pressure from Xerox, some of the parents of the teenagers in the film, and the local public television station, WIPB, Davis withdrew the film and it was suppressed by PBS. DeMott wrote a 25-page statement on the film, Xerox, and PBS. They then took the film on tour, showing it at film festivals, universities, and museums. Seventeen received the Grand Jury Prize Documentary at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival. DeMott and Kreines shot additional films in the 1970s and 80s, but they have yet to be completed and released. Goldbug Street, shot in 1976, is set for a 2027 release.

She and Kreines were cinematographers on D.A. Pennebaker's episodes of the 1979 television program The Energy War and on his 1989 documentary Depeche Mode 101. DeMott assisted her father, Benjamin DeMott, with research for three books.

DeMott lived in Coosada, Alabama. She collected outsider art with her partner, Jeff Kreines.

DeMott died on June 13, 2025 in Montgomery, Alabama of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

• Vince and Mary Ann Get Married • Montgomery Songs (1976) • 36 Girls (1976) • Down on the Farm (1977) • God & Country (1978) • Demon Lover Diary (1980) • Seventeen (1983) • A Simple Trip (1984) • Goldbug Street (2027) Only Demon Lover Diary and Seventeen are publicly available, with Goldbug Street scheduled for a 2027 release.

• The Energy War (1979) • Depeche Mode 101 (1989)