AllMovie

Filmmaker Jeremy Paul Kagan was trained in his craft at Harvard and NYU, later refining his skills at the American Film Institute. Kagan rose to fame in the 1960s, putting together several then-trendy "mulitmedia" presentations. His earliest TV directorial assignments pursued the same fragmentary, stream-of-consciousness style. TV movies like Katherine (1975) and Scott Joplin (1976) are prismatic, Citizen Kane-like efforts constructed in non-linear fashion, but Kagan's sense of discipline enables the audience to, at all times, keep track of what's happening and when. Among Kagan's better theatrical film projects were The Big Fix (1979) The Chosen (1980; winner of a Montreal World Film Festival) and Journey of Natty Gann (1987; Gold Prize winner, Moscow Film Festival). With these in mind, one can forgive Kagan such misfires as The Sting II (1983). In 1994, Jeremy Paul Kagan entered the realm of docudrama with his made-for-cable Roswell.