Sasha Waters Freyer

Sasha Waters Freyer (born November 19, 1968) is an American filmmaker and a Professor [1] of Film and Art Foundation at the #1 Public Fine Arts School in the country, Virginia Commonwealth University.[2]

Since 1998, Sasha has produced and directed 17 documentary and experimental films, 13 of which originate in 16mm. With the exception of her first documentary (Whipped, 1998),[3] she has edited of all of her films. Embracing a personal, artisanal approach to craft, she also served as the cinematographer, primarily in 16mm, and sound editor, on ten of them. Trained in photography and the documentary tradition, Sasha's films explore outsiders, misfits and everyday radicals.

Her most recent feature documentary, Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable,[4] screened theatrically and at festivals around the world in 2018; was called one of the year's best by The New Yorker's Richard Brody,[5] and won a Special Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival.[6] Winogrand aired on the PBS series American Masters in April 2019.[7] Her new film, in partnership with Producer Henry Rosenthal,[8] “Untitled Bruce Conner/ Soul Stirrers” documentary, recently received critical development support from the Catapult Film Fund.[9]

Life & Career

Sasha Waters Freyer was born in Brooklyn and received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in 1991. She moved from photography to filmmaking shortly after graduation, working for Michael Almereyda, Hal Hartley and Barbara Kopple, among others. While working for Kopple, Sasha met Iana Porter with whom she founded the New York production company Emotion Motion Pictures, Inc. and co-produced her first film, Whipped (1998), a 16mm documentary portrait of three professional New York dominatrixes. Whipped was funded in part by Sub Pop Records; was selected for the first ever Sundance Independent Producers conference, and aired nationally on the Sundance Channel in the early 2000s.

Sasha earned her MFA in Film & Media Arts from Temple University in 1999, where she studied with experimental filmmakers Lynne Sachs[10] and Rea Tajiri. Her film Razing Appalachia,[11] which chronicled a years-long struggle against the expansion of then the nation's largest strip mine in rural West Virginia, aired on the PBS series Independent Lens in 2003.[12] Razing Appalachia was the first feature documentary film about the environmental and social costs of mountaintop removal mining and has since screened in more than 30 countries globally. Writing in The New Yorker, Nancy Franklin said of Razing Appalachia that the film was a “good example of what makes public television valuable.”[13] Razing Appalachia earned awards at several U.S. film festivals including the Vermont International Film Festival, the EarthVision Environmental Film Festival and the Rural Route Film Festival and is distributed by Bullfrog Films.

In 2000, Sasha accepted a position teaching Film & Video at the University of Iowa, where she met her husband, media and social practice artist John D. Freyer, and created, over several years, a series of personal experimental films that have screened widely in the U.S. and abroad, including at the Tribeca Film Festival; Big Sky Documentary Film Festival; Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival; IMAGES in Toronto; Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cinema Latinoamericano in Havana, Cuba;[14] Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, and Chicago Underground Film Festivals, winning awards in the experimental film category from the Onion City Film Festival in Chicago, the Black Maria Film Festival and the Humboldt International Short Film Festival. Her 2010 documentary Chekhov for Children, premiered in the U.S. at the Telluride Film Festival and internationally at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.[15] Chekhov for Children was listed as one of the Best Undistributed Films of the year in the IndieWiRE Annual Critics Survey, 2010.[16] While Sasha's films screen primarily in festival/museum black box spaces, she has also shown in galleries including LAXART, West Hollywood;[17] Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn;[18] Manifest Destiny, Barcelona, and Terrault Contemporary, Baltimore, among others. Her experimental film Our Summer Made her Light Escape was included in the 2013 Senses of Cinema World Poll;[19] Our Summer was also included on the Cinefile "Best of the Decade" list, along with her experimental shorts An Incomplete History of the Natural World, 1965 and dragons & seraphim.

In 2013, Sasha left the University of Iowa to serve as the Chair (2013 - 2019) of the Department of Photography + Film at VCUarts in Richmond, VA, where she currently teaches BFA and MFA students working in photography, film and media installation.[20]

Awards & Recognition

Sasha Waters Freyer is the recipient of a 2019-20 Fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts [21] and recipient of the Orphan Film Symposium's 2016 Helen Hill Award, honoring the legacy of artist, educator and activist Helen Hill.[22]

Other grants and awards include Best in Show at New Waves, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (2016);[23] Director's Citation, Black Maria Film Festival (2013); Media Arts Production Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2015 [24] and 2007; the Derek Freese Documentary Film Fund;[25] the Graham Foundation; the Jerome Foundation; the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; The Jacqueline Donnet Fund; The Lucius & Eva Eastman Fund; The Skaggs Foundation, and the Iowa Arts Council. Sasha has been a Fellow at The MacDowell Colony (2017, 2002, 1999), Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her films have been the subject of feature reviews in ArtForum,[26]Mother Jones,[27]Variety,[28] IndieWIRE,[29]Film Threat,[30] The New York Times,[31]The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times,[32]The Hollywood Reporter,[33]VICE,[34]The New Yorker and Filmmaker Magazine,[35] among others.

Sasha is included in Edited By: Women Film Editors, a survey of women who "invented, developed, fine-tuned and revolutionized the art of film editing" (creation of avant-garde filmmaker Su Friedrich, Princeton, 2019). She is also included in the FemEx Film Archive (UC Santa Cruz/ UC Davis, 2017), an ongoing collective archive of interviews with feminist experimental filmmakers collaboratively launched by filmmakers Irene Lusztig and Julie Wyman.[36]

References
  1. "VCU Faculty Bio".
  2. "U.S. News & World Report Graduate School rankings".
  3. Alspector, Lisa. "Whipped". Chicago Reader. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  4. Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable - Official Trailer, retrieved 2020-02-09
  5. Brody, Richard. "How Garry Winogrand Transformed Street Photography". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  6. Whittaker, Richard; 10:00PM; Mar. 13, Tue; 2018. "SXSW Film Awards Announced". www.austinchronicle.com. Retrieved 2020-02-09.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. "Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable | About | American Masters | PBS". American Masters. 2019-03-13. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  8. "Henry S. Rosenthal". IMDb. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  9. "Catapult Film Fund". catapultfilmfund.org. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  10. "Sasha Waters Freyer". Vlog.videoart.net. 2013-05-23. Retrieved 2016-09-05.
  11. "Independent Lens . RAZING APPALACHIA . The Film". PBS. Retrieved 2016-09-05.
  12. "Independent Lens - Independent Documentary Films". PBS. Retrieved 2016-09-05.
  13. Franklin, Nancy (2003-05-19). "The Vision Thing". ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2019-01-15.
  14. "MUESTRA DE CINE EXPERIMENTAL 39 FESTIVAL".
  15. "IFFR Daily Tiger 2011".
  16. "IndieWire Best Undistributed Film Critics Survey, 2010" (PDF).
  17. "LAXART "The Crisis of Representation as Illustrated with Plants and Flowers." Curated by Hamza Walker".
  18. "Maps, Monuments and Meditations" exhibition, Microscope Gallery".
  19. "2013 World Poll – Part 2". Senses of Cinema. 2014-01-06. Retrieved 2020-02-10.
  20. "VCU Faculty Bio".
  21. "Visual Arts Fellowships 2019–20 - Programs | Virginia Museum of Fine Arts". 2014-02-21. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  22. "NYU Orphan Film Symposium announces Helen Hill Award, 2016".
  23. "New Waves 2016, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art Awards Announcement" (PDF).
  24. "NEA Grant Announcement" (PDF).
  25. "Derek Freese Documentary Fund List of Recipients".
  26. "Amy Taubin on Chekhov for Children". www.artforum.com. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  27. Nelson, Rob. "Razing Appalachia". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  28. Saperstein, Pat (2019-02-13). "Garry Winogrand Documentary Casts New Light on Mid-Century Street Photographer". Variety. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  29. Ehrlich, David (2018-09-19). "'Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable' Review: A Nuanced Portrait of a New York Legend". IndieWire. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  30. "Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable | Film Threat". 2018-10-06. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  31. Scott, A. O. (2018-09-18). "Review: 'Garry Winogrand' Pictures an Artist and His World". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  32. "Review: 'Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable' explores the artist who pushed his craft to its limits". Los Angeles Times. 2018-10-04. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  33. "'Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  34. Eggebeen, Greg (2018-10-10). "This Forgotten Street Photographer Shot Some of Our Most Iconic Images". Vice. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  35. Macaulay, Scott. "What Can Happen in the Frame: Sasha Waters Freyer on Her Doc, Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable". Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  36. Schultz-Figueroa, Benjamin (2018-03-05). "FEMEXFILMARCHIVE with Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
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