SHORT BIO: Elisabeth Subrin is a New York based award-winning director and artist. Her critically acclaimed films and video installations have been featured in numerous festivals and exhibitions internationally, including solo shows at The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Vienna Viennale. Subrin’s 2016 award-winning feature narrative, A Woman, A Part, had its world premiere in competition at The Rotterdam International Film Festival and traveled to festivals throughout Europe, US and Asia. It was released theatrically in 2017. Her 2022 award-winning short film, Maria Schneider, 1983, starring Manal Issa, Aissa Maiga and Isabel Sandoval, had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes International Film Festival in Director’s Fortnight and North American premiere at The 60th New York Film Festival in 2022 and was awarded a 2023 César (French Oscars). A commissioned multi-channel video, sound and sculptural version, The Listening Takes, was on view at David Winton Bell Gallery through June 4th, 2023. She is currently developing her feature-length bio-pic about Maria Schneider.
LONG BIO: Elisabeth Subrin is a New York-based filmmaker, writer and visual artist who creates works in film, video, photography, and installation. Her critically acclaimed projects explore intersections between cultural history and subjectivity, through a feminist lens. Known for her use of reenactment, Subrin’s previous award-winning short films, video art and installations have screened and exhibited widely in the US and abroad, including solo shows at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Vienna International Film Festival, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Harvard Film Archives, Cambridge, The National Gallery of Art, Lightbox Cinema, The San Francisco Cinematheque, and Film Society of Lincoln Center. She has presented her films in group shows, festivals and museums internationally, including The Whitney Biennial, The Guggenheim Museum, The Walker Art Center, The New York Film Festival (1998, 2000, 2006), VOLTA/NY, The Hessel Museum at Bard College, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival (1998, 2001, 2016) and film festivals globally. In 2012 and 2022, her film Shulie was included in the British Film Institute’s Sight&Sound once-a-decade international critics’ poll for “The Greatest Films of All Times.” Richard Brody covered her 2015 solo show at Film Society of Lincoln Center for The New Yorker, writing of Shulie: “Subrin’s concepts are ingenious and her experiment results in a major advance in the field. Her ideas are beautiful, and the movie is a thing of wonder.”
Her new award-winning short film, Maria Schneider, 1983, starring Manal Issa, Aissa Maiga and Isabel Sandoval, had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes International Film Festival in Director’s Fortnight and North American premiere at The 60th New York Film Festival and is nominated for a César (French Oscars) in Best Documentary Short Film category. A multi-channel video, sound and sculptural version, The Listening Takes, is on view at David Winton Bell Gallery until June 4th, 2023. She is currently developing her feature-length bio-pic about Maria Schneider.
In 2016 Subrin premiered her award-winning first feature film, A Woman, A Part, at The Rotterdam International Film Festival in the Tiger Awards competition before presenting it in festivals worldwide. Starring Maggie Siff, Cara Seymour, John Ortiz and Khandi Alexander, it was acquired by Strand Releasing for distribution and theatrically released in 2017. It was also acquired by Netflix, Showtime and The Criterion Channel. Critically acclaimed by The New York Times, Variety, Artforum, The Los Angeles Times and many others, A Woman, A Part was selected for many Best Of lists in 2016 and 2017. Currently, The Criterion Channel is presenting several of her short films and video art.
In 2010, Sue Scott Gallery in New York mounted a retrospective of her work, Elisabeth Subrin: Her Compulsion To Repeat. It her 2010 video installation Lost Tribes and Promised Lands, her 2008 two-channel film projection Sweet Ruin, as well as selected experimental films, videos, and large-scale photographic stills from 1990-2010. Parts of the exhibition traveled to MoMA/PS1’s Greater New York, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, La Musee D’Art Contemporain de Val De Marne, Paris, The Haggerty Museum, Milwaukee, and in solo exhibitions at The Jewish Museum, New York, and VOLTA, New York.
A Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Fulbright Fellow, Subrin has also received grants from Creative Capital, The Annenberg Foundation, NYSCA, The Westenberger Foundation, France 3, Centre Nationale du Cinéma, and The Andrea Frank Foundation. She was a fellow at The Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmaker and Screenwriter Labs. She has been a fellow at The MacDowell Colony six times, as well as creating a commissioned film for their Centennial. She has also held residencies at Yaddo and Denniston Hill. Her work has been written about extensively in The New York Times, Artforum, The New Yorker, Art Journal, Frieze, BOMB, The LA Weekly, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Village Voice and The Boston Globe and has been the subject of academic book chapters, essays, and panels. Subrin is the creator of the feminist film blog, Who Cares About Actresses, and lectures frequently on film, feminism, and independent cinema.
Subrin received a BFA in Film from the Massachusetts College of Art and a MFA in Video from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a Professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University. Subrin was a 2020 Fulbright Research Scholar in France at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy.
