The first adult film he recalls having seen was the 1958 cult classic Thunder Road ( starring Robert Mitchum ) the violence and darkness of which left an impression on the seven-year-old Jarmusch.

Director Jim Jarmusch ( left ) and de Bankolé ( right ) promoting The Limits of Control at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in September 2009.

* The Limits of Control ( 2009 ) — directed by Jim Jarmusch

After graduating from high school in 1971, Jarmusch moved to Chicago and enrolled in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

During his final year at Columbia, Jarmusch moved to Paris, for what was initially a summer semester on an exchange program but turned into ten months.

In his final year at New York University, Jarmusch worked as an assistant to the renowned film noir director Nicholas Ray, who was at that time teaching in the department.

Jarmusch at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

Though his films are predominantly set in the United States, Jarmusch has advanced the notion that he looks at America " through a foreigner's eyes ", with the intention of creating a form of world cinema that synthesizes European and Japanese film with that of Hollywood.

Jarmusch was recognized with the Filmmaker on the Edge award at the 2004 Provincetown International Film Festival.

A retrospective of the director's films was hosted at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during February 1994, and another, " The Sad and Beautiful World of Jim Jarmusch ", by the American Film Institute in August 2005.

Jarmusch at punk club CBGB in New York City on November 30, 2003.

The author of a series of essays on influential bands, Jarmusch has also had at least two poems published.

In 2004, Jarmusch was honored with the Filmmaker on the Edge Award at the Provincetown International Film Festival.

Writer and director Jim Jarmusch had initially shot his first feature, Permanent Vacation ( 1980 ) as his final thesis while at New York University's film school, and spent the following four years making Stranger than Paradise.

Directors Sam Peckinpah, Hal Ashby, and Jim Jarmusch where all attached to the project at some point, but the film was never made.

Tom Waits described it to Rolling Stone in 1986 as " somewhere between the Elks Club and the Academy Awards ", and claimed to have met Jarmusch at an annual meeting of the New York chapter.

When asked about the society by friend and collaborator Luc Sante in a 1989 interview, Jarmusch commented " I'm not at liberty to divulge information about the organization, other than to tell you that it does exist.

" Jarmusch revealed in a 1992 interview that the real son of Lee Marvin, Christopher, had objected to the existence of the organization in an encounter with Waits at a bar:

Kristel briefly apepars as Agent 34 ; an established cinematographer in the alternative film scene, Curaçao-born Robby Müller has repeatedly worked with Wim Wenders, Lars von Trier and Jim Jarmusch ; a director at the start of his career, Kees van Oostrum has moved to US to become a prolific cinematographer on various TV-movies and miniseries ; two-time Academy Awards nominated production designer Jan Roelfs, who worked with Andrew Niccol and Oliver Stone ; George Sluizer, who made an American remake of his popular culthit Spoorloos and currently works mostly on pan-European co-productions, will make a US-comeback with the Rob Schneider-comedy The Chosen One ( 2009 ); cameraman Rogier Stoffers, who shot a number of US box office hits in the 2000s, most notably Disturbia ; tall man Carel Struycken, whose physique landed him the parts of Lurch in Barry Sonnenfeld's The Addams Family films and The Giant in Twin Peaks ; Jany Temime was costume designer on the last three Harry Potter films, In Bruges and Children of Men ; Arjen Tuiten, a special make-up effects artist working for the Stan Winston Studio, with El Laberinto del fauno as one of his prominent credits ; Dutch born costume designer Elsa Zamparelli, who received an Oscar nomination for Dances with Wolves.

Broke and working as a musician in New York City after returning from Paris in 1976, Jarmusch applied on a whim to the prestigious Graduate Film School of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts ( then under the direction of Hollywood director László Benedek ).

He has influenced a number of other filmmakers, including Andrei Tarkovsky, Michael Haneke, Jim Jarmusch, the Dardenne brothers, Aki Kaurismäki, and Paul Schrader, whose book Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer includes a detailed critical analysis.

* Jim Jarmusch ( Film Director )

The proposed seventh film, Tigrero, based on a book by Sasha Siemel, is the subject of a 1994 documentary by Mika Kaurismäki, Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made, that featured Fuller and Jim Jarmusch visiting the proposed Amazon locations of the film.

In September 2010, Jarmusch helped to curate the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in Monticello, New York.

On September 28, 2007, a Los Angeles federal court jury rejected Martin's claim that Jarmusch and Focus Films stole the screenplay from Martin.

In October 2009, Jarmusch appeared as himself in an episode of the HBO series Bored to Death.

James R. " Jim " Jarmusch (; born January 22, 1953 ) is an American independent film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor and composer.

Jarmusch has been a major proponent of independent cinema, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s.

Jarmusch was born to a family of middle-class suburbanites in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio in 1953.

Despite his enthusiasm for film, Jarmusch, an avid reader in his youth, had a greater interest in literature, a pursuit in which he was encouraged by his grandmother.

Though he refused to attend church with his Episcopalian parents ( not being enthused by " the idea of sitting in a stuffy room wearing a little tie "), Jarmusch credits literature with shaping his metaphysical beliefs and leading him to reconsider theology in his mid-teens.

After being asked to leave due to neglecting to take any journalism courses – Jarmusch favored literature and art history – he transferred to Columbia University the following year, with the intention of becoming a poet.

Jarmusch graduated from Columbia University in 1975.

During the late 1970s in New York City, Jarmusch and his contemporaries were part of an alternative culture scene centered on the CBGB music club.

In an anecdote Jarmusch has recounted of the formative experience of showing his mentor his first script, Ray disapproved of its lack of action, to which Jarmusch responded after meditating on the critique by reworking the script to be even less eventful.

Jarmusch was the only person Ray brought to work – as his personal assistant – on Lightning Over Water, a documentary about his dying years on which he was collaborating with Wim Wenders.

A few days afterwards, having been encouraged by Ray and New York underground filmmaker Amos Poe and using scholarship funds given by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation to pay for his school tuition, Jarmusch started work on a film for his final project.

In 1986, Jarmusch wrote and directed Down by Law, starring musicians John Lurie and Tom Waits, and Italian comic actor Roberto Benigni ( his introduction to American audiences ) as three convicts who escape from a New Orleans jailhouse.

As a result of his early work, Jarmusch became an influential representative of the trend of the American road movie.

Not intended to appeal to mainstream filmgoers, these early Jarmusch films were embraced by art house audiences, gaining a small but dedicated American following and cult status in Europe and Japan.

In 1991 Jim Jarmusch appeared as himself in Episode One of John Lurie's cult television series Fishing With John.

In 1995, Jarmusch released Dead Man, a period film set in the 19th century American West starring Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer.

The film was shot in black and white by Robby Müller, and features a score composed and performed by Neil Young, for whom Jarmusch subsequently filmed the tour documentary Year of the Horse, released to tepid reviews in 1997.