LAFCO and early documentaries (2000–2007) In 2000, Ruspoli founded the Los Angeles Filmmakers Cooperative (LAFCO), a collective of filmmakers and musicians based in a converted
school bus in
Venice, California. Through LAFCO he directed several documentary shorts and features.
Just Say Know (2002) addresses three generations of his family's experience with addiction.
This Film Needs No Title: A Portrait of Raymond Smullyan (2004) profiles the mathematician and logician
Raymond Smullyan.
El Cable (2004) and
Behind the Wheel (2008) document subcultural communities.
Flamenco: A Personal Journey (2005) follows Ruspoli's study of
flamenco guitar with
Gitanos musicians in southern Spain and accompanied his album of the same name on
Mapleshade Records. LAFCO also produced the narrative feature
Camjackers (2006), on which Ruspoli was credited as co-editor, actor, and executive producer; the film won the editing award at the 44th
Ann Arbor Film Festival.
Narrative and documentary features (2008–2017) Ruspoli's narrative debut,
Fix (2008), premiered at the
Slamdance Film Festival and won the Heineken Red Star Award at the
Santa Barbara International Film Festival. At the
Brooklyn International Film Festival it received the Grand Chameleon Award, Best Narrative Feature, and Best Actor; it also won Best Film at the
Vail Film Festival and the Twin Rivers Media Festival. Reviews were mixed:
Variety called it "breezy, brash" but uneven, while
The New York Times described its visual approach as energetic if undisciplined.
Being in the World (2010) is a documentary on Heidegger's concept of
being-in-the-world developed through Dreyfus's teaching. It interweaves interviews with philosophers — including Dreyfus,
Mark Wrathall,
Sean Kelly,
Taylor Carman,
John Haugeland,
Iain Thomson,
Charles Taylor, and
Albert Borgmann — with portraits of master practitioners such as the chef Leah Chase, the Japanese carpenter Hiroshi Sakaguchi, the flamenco guitarist Manuel Molina, and the jazz pianist
Austin Peralta. The film received the Audience Award for Documentary Feature at the Brooklyn International Film Festival and a favorable review in
Spirituality & Practice. It has continued to be used as introductory material in university courses on existential phenomenology. Between 2012 and 2014, Ruspoli was a producer on
Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary, directed by Gay Dillingham and narrated by
Robert Redford. The documentary screened at the
Mill Valley Film Festival and received a limited U.S. theatrical release in 2015;
The Hollywood Reporter described it as "both informative and moving".
Monogamish (2017), a documentary on contemporary attitudes to
monogamy and alternative relationship structures, was co-written with
Mark Wrathall. It includes interviews with the columnist
Dan Savage, the psychotherapist
Esther Perel, the evolutionary psychologist
Christopher Ryan, the historian
Stephanie Coontz, and the attorney Diana Adams. The film premiered at the
Rome Film Festival in 2015 and received a U.S. theatrical release through Abramorama in October 2017. Reviews in
IndieWire,
Film Inquiry, and
Film Threat were favorable. In addition to his films, Ruspoli published a self-curated photography monograph, ''Midway on Our Life's Journey'', in 2018, gathering twenty years of work.
Bombay Beach Biennale and Institute (2016–present) In 2016, Ruspoli co-founded the
Bombay Beach Biennale with the hotelier Stefan Ashkenazy and the public-art producer Lily Johnson White. The free, non-commercial event combines
site-specific installations, performances, and an academic philosophy conference in the post-industrial landscape of
Bombay Beach. The Biennale has produced permanent infrastructure in the town, including an outdoor opera house, a drive-in cinema, and several artist-residency spaces; Ruspoli's own contributions include the Bombay Beach Institute of Particle Physics, Metaphysics, and International Relations, an artist-residency compound on the corner of Fifth and H, and the
Bombay Beach Metro installation, co-created with the artist Dave Corcoran. Beginning with the 2026 edition (the tenth annual gathering, branded "Year X"), the organizers shifted to an even-year cadence, with a smaller event called Convivium occurring in odd years. In January 2025, Ruspoli and Dulcinée DeGuere co-founded the Bombay Beach Institute for Industrial Espionage & Post-Apocalyptic Studies, a
501(c)(3) organization for which Ruspoli serves as chairman. The Institute operates as a cultural laboratory and research organization, hosting artist residencies, the annual conference of the American Society for Existential Phenomenology, and public programming across several sites in Bombay Beach. In May 2024, Ruspoli delivered the commencement address to the
University of California, Berkeley philosophy department's graduating class, returning to the department where he had studied with Hubert Dreyfus a quarter-century earlier. Since 2020 he has co-hosted the
Being in the World podcast with
Patrick House; episodes range over consciousness, artificial intelligence, mental health, and narrative.
The Dulcinée Dialectic (2026) The Dulcinée Dialectic (2026), a documentary essay film about
bipolar II disorder, creativity, and
artificial intelligence, premiered at the American Documentary and Animation Film Festival (
AmDocs) in Palm Springs in March 2026, where it received the Special Jury Award for Best Feature Documentary and the award for Best Post Production Sound. Inspired by
Chris Marker's
Sans Soleil, the film features
Mark Wrathall,
Patrick House, the cognitive scientist Aaron Bornstein, the writer
Marya Hornbacher, and the musician
Emily Wells. ==Personal life==