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

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.

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:

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

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.

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.

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 ).

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.

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

In a 1989 review of his work, Vincent Canby of The New York Times called Jarmusch " the most adventurous and arresting film maker to surface in the American cinema in this decade ".

* At New York University, Ray taught and befriended cult director Jim Jarmusch, who became his assistant.

" Jarmusch has told interviewers that he developed the title character with Whitaker in mind ; the New York Times review of the film observed that " t's hard to think of another actor who could play a cold-blooded killer with such warmth and humanity.

A New York Times magazine feature article called WFMU " a station whose name has become like a secret handshake among a certain tastemaking cognoscenti ", and cites Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and playwright Eric Bogosian as avowed fans of the station.

In the late seventies it housed The New Cinema, featuring film and video by independent filmmakers, including Eric Mitchell, Anders Grafstrom, Scott and Beth B, Jim Jarmusch, Charles Ahearn and Amos Poe.

After graduating from Columbia University with a degree in English Literature, he formed the New York No Wave band The Del-Byzanteens in the early 1980s with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and painter James Nares, collaborated with photographer Nan Goldin on the soundtrack to her Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and toured the world as a veteran of Glenn Branca's guitar ensemble.

This brief movement, also known as New Cinema ( after a short-lived screening room on St. Mark ’ s Place run by several filmmakers on the scene ), had a significant impact on both underground film, spawning the Cinema of Transgression ( Beth B, Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Tessa Hughes Freeland and others ) and a new generation of independent filmmaking in New York ( Jim Jarmusch, Tom DiCillo, Steve Buscemi, and Vincent Gallo ).

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.

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 behind-the-scenes documentary, Behind Jim Jarmusch, was filmed over three days on the set of the film in Seville by director Léa Rinaldi.

Jarmusch is also featured on the album Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture ( 2005 ) in two interludes described by Sean Fennessy in a Pitchfork Media review of the album as both " bizarrely pretentious " and " reason alone to give it a listen ".

Supplementary footage on the second disc includes Kino ’ 84: Jim Jarmusch, a series of interviews with the cast and crew from both films by a German television program, as well as Some Days in January ( 1984 ), a behind-the-scenes Super-8 film by the director's brother.

He also has worked with Tim Burton, Quentin Tarantino, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, Jim Jarmusch, Robert Rodriguez, and Michael Bay on various occasions.

* Night on Earth ( 1991 ), director Jim Jarmusch

Jarmusch also used frequent Kaurismäki actors in his film Night on Earth, a part of which takes place in Helsinki, Finland.

He subsequently took strong character roles in Kafka by Steven Soderbergh and Night on Earth by Jim Jarmusch ( both 1991 ).

Night on Earth is a 1991 film directed by Jim Jarmusch.

* Night on Earth ( soundtrack ), the soundtrack album from the Jarmusch film, written by Tom Waits.

* 1992: A Night on Earth ( Jim Jarmusch )

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.

American film directors, Paul Thomas Anderson, Joel & Ethan Coen, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Robert De Niro, Curtis Hanson, Jim Jarmusch, Ang Lee, Richard Linklater, Terrence Malick, Michael Moore, Robert Redford, Martin Scorsese, James Schamus, Paul Schrader, Steven Soderbergh, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone and Frederick Wiseman, signed a letter on 30 April 2010 urging Panahi's release.