Patricia Gruben

Gruben was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1947.[1][3][7][8] She attended Rice University where she studied anthropology.[9] Gruben went on to attend the University of Texas where she studied film.[1][6][9] After completing her graduate studies, she moved to Toronto in the early 1970s.[1][6][9] Over the following years Gruben worked in different fields of the film industry, from commercials to productions designed for children.[1][4] Over the course of her career, she has worked as a director, an editor, an assistant director, a cinematographer, a props assistant, an art director, a writer, a set decorator and a producer.[1][4][6]

Her first film, The Central Character (1979),[10] was a short.[1][4][6] The Women’s Companion to International Film, edited by Annette Kuhn and Susannah Radstone, states that this short "received immediate attention as the work of a major new figure in Canada’s Avant Garde."[1] Gruben went on to make another experimental short, Sifted Evidence (1982), which received international attention from film festival screenings.[1][6]

Gruben worked as a set decorator[11][12] for Spasms (1982),[13] a horror film directed by William Fruet, before working her first feature film.[5][11] Gruben wrote and directed Low Visibility (1984),[5][11][14] which told the story of a man who had lost his ability to communicate and his memory.[1] Gruben also wrote and directed Deep Sleep (1990), and directed Ley Lines (1993).[5][11] Ley Lines is an autobiographical documentary based on Gruben’s family tree, where she follows her lineage from America to Germany and Canada.[15]

Gruben began to teach at Simon Fraser University in 1984.[1][4][16] Three years later, in 1987, Gruben and Colin Browne founded the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters.[2][6] The program was part of the Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, which received funding from both the government of British Columbia and the university.[2] The purpose of the program was to assist Canadian screenwriters by providing the opportunity to work with professionals in the industry.[2][6][17] In 2013, a Globe and Mail article announced that the program would end in 2014 due to lack of funding.[17] The program will be leaving the university in 2015.[2] Gruben is currently an associate professor at Simon Fraser University and specializes in Indian cinema.[18]

In 2015 she was a judge for the Daryl Duke Prize.[19]

Gruben received the Teamsters 155 Woman of the Year Award in 2015 from Women in Film and Television, a non-for-profit organization that hosts the awards.[2][6][20] The award requires that the recipient be "a woman who has achieved a significant success in the field of film or television, and who is recognized for mentoring other women in the industry."[6]

• The Central Character (1979)
• Sifted Evidence (1982)[22]
• Spasms (1982), alternate title Death Bites
• Low Visibility (1984)
• Determinations (1988)
• Deep Sleep (1990)
• Ley Lines (1993)
• Before it Blows (1997)

• Patricia Gruben at IMDb