E. Elias Merhige
Edmund Elias Merhige, known as E. Elias Merhige (, pronounced like "marriage"; born June 14, 1964), is an American film director born in Brooklyn, New York City. Work. Merhige is known to mainstream audiences for his work on the 2000 film "Shadow of the Vampire" and to underground audiences for the cult 1989 film "Begotten". He has also directed music videos for Marilyn Manson. Merhige started in the New York theatre scene, and first conceived "Begotten" as a work of experimental theatre, casting many actors from his company in supporting roles. Following the release of his last feature  film "Suspect Zero", Merhige has mostly returned to work in the theatre. He is currently supervising a reconstruction of the 1979 film "Caligula", titled "Gore Vidal’s Caligula", that adheres more closely to Gore Vidal’s screenplay. Critical reception. Eugene Thacker, writing about "Begotten", placed Merhige's work "between genre horror and performance art," marking "Begotten" as a "ritual in cinematic time," and concluding that the next step in Merhige's art offering "presumably, would be to allow everything to dissolve - human into non-human, body into environment, image into emulsions of gelatin, crystal, and camphor." E. Elias Merhige Edmund