Derek Kimball is a Maine-based filmmaker.  After nearly a decade teaching directing, cinematography and film editing he returned home to direct his award-winning feature, Neptune, which premiered at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival. He is currently developing a new feature, A Winter Table, with the help of a Sundance fellowship.

Neptune was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance and the Nashville Film Festival, won three awards at the 2016 Massachusetts Independent Film Festival including Best Feature and Best Director. and has been an official selection at over 15 other festivals. Reviewer Joshua Brunsting at CriterionCast.com called Neptune “One of the best films to come out of Slamdance in quite some time, Kimball’s film is a quiet and assured meditation on grief, almost a ghost story where the spectre is a young woman’s loss of childhood. Driven by a beautiful lead performance from an up and coming actress, this is something to be hunted down.”

Derek was chosen to be one of the 11 Sundance Institute FilmTwo Initiative Fellows for 2017, a Universal Pictures-sponsored fellowship that assists filmmakers in developing their second features.  In 2014, his cinematography for the television series Ragged Isle was nominated for an Indie Series Award. He has previously taught both workshops and multi-week intensives at Maine Media.

Slamdance Review – “Neptune”