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Robert F. "Bob" Swaim is an American film director, born in Chicago on November 2, 1943. He grew up in the Reseda area of Los Angeles and graduated from Reseda High School in 1961 and with a degree in anthropology from California State University, Northridge, then called San Fernando Valley State College, in 1965.
Bob then went to France to work on his doctorate in ethnology. He studied at the Collège de France with Claude Lévi-Strauss and Georges Ballandier at L'École des Langues Orientales. However, spending most of his free time at the French Cinématheque, he quickly caught the "film bug" and dropped out of his doctoral program and entered l'École Nationale de la Cinématographie et la Photographie on the rue de Vaugirard, later known as l'Ecole Louis Lumière.
After graduating from "Vaugirard" in 1970, Swaim spent most of the seventies writing and directing documentaries and commercials. Unable to break into the closed world of feature films, he founded, along with several other young filmmakers, a film company to produce their own films. During the few years of their existence, they produced over fifty theatrical short films of young debutant filmmakers including 3 short films that Swaim wrote, directed and produced. The three films won numerous international prizes and awards and enable Swaim to write and direct his first feature film, La Nuit de Saint Germain des Prés starring Michel Galabru, Mort Shuman, and for the first time on screen, a young talented actor named Daniel Auteuil. The film also marked the re-discovery of a long forgotten French writer, Leo Malet and introduced his character, Nestor Burma, to a new generation of mystery fans.
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