Othello (1995 film) Othello (1995 film) Othello is a 1995 film based on William Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name. It was directed by Oliver Parker and stars Laurence Fishburne as Othello, Irène Jacob as Desdemona, and Kenneth Branagh as Iago. This is the first cinematic reproduction of the play released by a major studio that casts an African American actor to play the role of Othello, although low-budget independent films of the play starring Ted Lange and Yaphet Kotto predated it. This film is an adaptation of William Shakespeare's "Othello". Othello is a Moor who has secretly married his native Venetian lover
Filming Othello at Boston Symphony Hall.) Some of Welles' "The Other Side of the Wind" crew—Gary Graver, Michael Stringer and Larry Jackson—worked on "Filming Othello". "Filming Othello" uses clips from "Othello", but the footage is not accompanied by the film's dialogue track. "Filming Othello" was first shown at the 1978 Berlin Film Festival. It was first screened in the U.S. in 1979 at the Public Theater in New York, where it played on a double bill with "Othello". However, the film's presentation did not receive newspaper reviews. "Filming Othello" had no further U.S. screenings until it returned to New York in 1987