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She/They
Arts Division
Film and Digital Media Department
Dr.
Faculty
Lecturer
Documentary Film
GLBTQ Film and Media
Environmental Art
Archives, Archival Practices
Experimental Film
Film History
Urban studies
Film Preservation and Film Archiving
Digital Media
Queer Studies
Communications Building
Oakland, CA
By appt only on zoom (pref Mondays)
Film and Digital Media
PhD 2020 University of California, Santa Cruz, Film & Digital Media
MFA 2003 Bard College
BA w/ Honors, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
Environmental cinema, LGBTQ+ film/media history, archival & found footage filmmaking, documentary history, experimental film history, film editing, City Symphony and the city on film (urban studies and landscape cinema).
2018–20 Mellon Curatorial Fellowship, Oakland Museum of California.
2018–19 Chancellor’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship, UC Santa Cruz.
2010 Radar Writers Fellowship, Akumal, Mexico.
2005 Media Arts Fellowship, Dance Theater Workshop, New York, NY.
2004 MacDowell Colony Artist Residency, Peterborough, NH.
2004 Finishing Fund Grant, Experimental TV Center, Newark Valley, NY.
2004 Experimental Television Center Artist Residency, Owego, NY.
current Topiary on Film (podcast producer and host), on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
2025 Lesbian Custody (video essay short), distributed by Women Make Movies.
Invited Screenings: UCLA Film & TV Archive, Yale University, CUNY Graduate Center, Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan), Gravitational Lensing Feminist Film Series at Shapeshifters (Oakland, CA). Festivals: Frameline SF Int’l LGBTQ Film Festival, CA Film Pride (San Rafael, CA), Santa Cruz Film Festival, Out Here Dayton, Queer Visions (Kyoto, Japan), Queerscreen (Sydney, Australia), Utah Queer Film Festival (Salt Lake City).
2024-5 Animal-Vegetable-Mineral (podcast producer, co-host), on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
2022 Medusa's Mirage (multi-screen installation, co-director) Livability Symposium, Como, Italy.
2019–22 Exit Zero: An Atlas of One City Block Through Time (iDoc), FLEFF 2022 (Ithaca, NY);
iDocs (Bristol, UK); Visible Evidence Conference (Bloomington); Stanford University, CA.
* featured in Documentary Habitats: Transmedia Ecologies, by Dale Hudson and
Patricia R. Zimmermann, (Indiana University Press, 2026): 175-177.
2013 "Chapter 18," in Valencia: The Movie/s (compilation film adaptation of Michelle Tea’s novel).
Frameline SF Int’l LGBTQ Film Festival, MIX/NYC, Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature
— Reeling: Chicago In'tl LGBT Film Festival; Best Experimental Feature, POLARI26
(Austin, TX); Cleveland International Film Festival (OH); Seattle Gay & Lesbian Film
Festival (WA), Tampa Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (FL); Milwaukee LGBT Film Festival
(WI); Vancouver Queer Film Festival (Canada); OUTFEST Los Angeles.
2010 Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (multi-media performance and installation).
MIX/NYC at Abrons Art Center; Climate Theater, San Francisco, CA; Dixon Place, NYC.
2008 Gum and Tea, (experimental animated short)
MIX/NYC; published in The Journal of Short Film, Vol. 10, Winter 2008.
2007 "The Sirens, Ch. 12," The Odyssey, Pocket Myths (experimental compilation film)
MIX/NY, Brooklyn, NY; 2007 Cellspace, San Francisco, CA.
2005–06 Shtudio Show (host and on-stage interviewer), Chez Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY.
2004 New Kicks (music video director/camera/editor) Le Tigre single, The Island, MTV broadcast.
2003 See Level (projection designer), David Dorfman Dance Co., The Kitchen, NYC & touring.
2003 I Succumb (projection designer), Miguel Gutierrez & the Powerful People, DTW, NYC.
2003 "Snatchel (co-director, sound designer), Movement Research, Judson Church, NYC.
2003 Reeperbahn (director, experimental documentary short) - NY Video Festival, Lincoln Center;
Silver Plaque, Chicago International Film Festival; broadcast Reel NY, WNET.
2002 Little Frankenstein, (director, experimental documentary short) - Frameline SF Int’l LGBTQ FF; MIX/NY Experimental Queer Film Festival; MIX/Brasil (São Paulo); 2004 MIX/Bonn Biennale (Germany); 2005 Reel NY, WNET Ch. 13; 2015 #QUEERFAIL Festival, Radar, SF.
2000 Momentum (dance-film, experimental short), screened at dance film festivals internationally.
1998 Atalanta (writer/director/actor, super-8 dance film w/ live orchestra) ODC Theater, SF;
Frameline SF LGBTQ Film Festival; Thread Waxing Space, NYC, 2000; int’l festivals.
1997 Sister Spit Ramblin’ Road Show (performer and documentarian)
US tour: 21 cities across the country; CD recording on Mouth Almighty Records.
1997 Vagina Dentata (multimedia performance, with Abby Crain), Footwork Studio, SF.
1996 The Fool (multi-media solo performance), The Lab, San Francisco.
1995 Cyberstroika (multi-media exhibition), co-produced w/ Please Louise Productions,
special 3-day event event at 18th SF Int’l Film Festival, Southern Exposure Gallery, SF.
2026 “Print Generations” in conversation with filmmakers, SFMoMA, San Francisco.
2025 "Lesbian Custody," with Dr. Yuka Kanno, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.
2025 "In the Best Interests of the Children," Yale University, New Haven, CT.
2025 "In the Best Interests of the Children,” UCLA Film & Television Archive, Los Angeles, CA.
2023 "City Symphony and the Urban Macrocosm," American University in Paris, France.
2022 "Mapping Entanglements," Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, Ithaca, NY.
2019 "In Conversation: Queer Cinema," with Greg Youmans, Oakland Museum of California.
2018 "Exit Zero: An Atlas of One City Block," Creative Cities, Stanford University.
2017 "Exit Zero: Hayes Valley Freeways to the Future," Place Talks, Prelinger Library, SF.
Book Chapter
“Citizenfour and the Anti-Representational Turn: aesthetics of failure in the information age,” Rethinking Popular Documentary, eds. Christie Milliken and Steve Anderson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021): 220-237.
Articles
“‘Life-affirming art is the point!’: Brydie O’Connor on Barbara Forever (2026),” Millennium Film Journal, No. 84 (Fall) and online.
“Toward a New Trans Cinema: Jenni Olson in Conversation,” Millennium Film Journal, No. 83 (Spring): 87-93.
“In the Best Interests of the Children: A Case Study of a “Useful” Lesbian Propaganda Film,” Feminist Media Histories 11.2 (Spring 2025): 144–165.
“Mothership: Voyage into Afrofuturism at the Oakland Museum of California,” Millenium Film Journal, No. 75 (Spring 2022): 26-33.
“Faya Dayi: Escaping into the Cinematic,” Docalogue, August 2022.
“Loving the Lie: Elizabeth Holmes, Thomas Edison, and Alex Gibney,” Film Quarterly (Fall 2020) 74 (1): 64-68.
“Looking Back on Queer Futures,” Open Space Field Notes, SF MoMA, July 22, 2019, https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2019/07/looking-back-on-queer-futures/.
“Valencia/The Movie(s): A New Collectivity,” co-written with Liz Clarke, Camera Obscura 31.3, 2016, Vol 31, No. 3 93, Duke University Press, pp. 165-175.
“The Ethical Implications of Zeros, Circles and Loops,” Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture, Vol. 23: Special Issue: Loop Media, Nov. 2016.
“Virtual Female,” SF Camerawork Journal, Fall/Winter 1995, Volume 22, No. 2, 1995, 30-32.
Book Reviews / Conference Proceedings
“The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity Between the Wars (Book Review)” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 30.1, Spring 2021.
“Documentary Across Disciplines eds. by Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg (review), JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 58.2, Winter 2019.
“Review: Documentary Across Disciplines eds. by Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg, Biography, 41, no. 2, (2018):389-392.
“Symposium Review: Poetics & Politics: Documentary Research Symposium, May 15–17, 2015, UC Santa Cruz, CA,” Journal of Media Practice, 17/1, 2016, 117-118.
Other Publications
"The Times of Harvey Milk," Screen Slate, May 19,2025.
“Star,” Sister Spit: Writings, Rants & Reminiscence from the Road, ed. Michelle Tea (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2012): 19-20.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, performance text, Brooklyn, NY: Bonsai Emanuel Press, 2010.
“Gum and Tea,” The Journal of Short Film, Volume 10, Winter, 2008.
FILM 80A, FILM 80S, FILM 136C, FILM 136D, FILM 160, FILM 162, FILM 165A, FILM 171c, FILM 172, FILM 177, FILM 185X, FILM 194s, FILM 200C
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