Film
Lynn Hershman Leeson has directed 26 films. Her six most recent films are feature length, including her much acclaimed documentary !Women Art Revolution, a living history of the feminist art movement.
Tania Libre (2017)
Hershman Leeson’s latest film, winner of the Persistence of Vision Award at the 2017 SFFilm Festival and official selection of the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival in the Panorama category, focuses on internationally renown Cuban artist Tania Bruguera. In December 2014, Bruguera announced her intention to provide an open, uncensored platform for citizens in Havana to freely express their views in public for one minute. Before the performance took place, she was arrested. After three consecutive detentions, Bruguera was held for treason and her passport was revoked. Her imprisonment lasted eight months. Within days of her release she returned to the United States and visited noted psychiatrist Dr. Frank Ochberg, founding father of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Stockholm Syndrome to acquire the skills necessary to process the invasive infringement wrought by the paranoid machinery of the people’s dictatorship, including the revocation of her right to practice her art. Their intimate and profound conversation shows how film can become a medium of empathy. It reveals the relationship of the artist to her family that mirrors the subversive surveillance culture that many Cubans encounter in their daily life. Perhaps as a result, within a few months Tania Bruguera created the Hannah Arendt Institute for Art and Activism in Havana, Cuba and declared her candidacy for President of Cuba in 2018.
!Women Art Revolution (2012)
Through intimate interviews, art, and rarely seen archival film and video footage, !Women Art Revolution reveals how the Feminist Art Movement fused free speech and politics into an art that radically transformed the culture of our times.
Director, Writer, Editor, Producer / TRT 83 mins / World Premier: Toronto Film Festival September 2010 / US Premier: Sundance 2011 / European Premier: Berlinale International Film Festival 2011 / Distributed by Zeitgeist / BEST FILM ON ART, MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL FEST
Strange Culture (2009)
Strange Culture, a fusion of documentary and docudrama, examines a surreal miscarriage of justice amplified by post-9/11 hysteria.
Director, Writer, Editor, Producer / TRT 83 mins / Starring Tilda Swinton, Thomas Jay Ryan / World Premier: Sundance Film Festival 2008 / European Premier: Berlin Film Festival 2009, Human Rights Watch Festival and others / Distributed by Cinedigm / MARLON RIGGS AWARD FOR COURAGE AND INNOVATION
Teknolust (2003)
In this sci-fi-drama, Tilda Swinton plays four parts, including Rosetta Stone—a scientist specializing in biogenetics who has created three self-replicating automatons who rely on sperm to survive.
Director, Writer, Editor, Producer / TRT 82 mins / Starring Tilda Swinton, Jeremy David, Karen Black, Thomas Jay Ryan, James Urbaniak / 2002 Sundance Film Festival / 2003 Berlin Film Festival / 2002 Toronto International Film Festival / ALFRED P. SLOAN AWARD FOR WRITING AND DIRECTING
Conceiving Ada (1997)
This Sci-Fi adventure is a time travel film about Lady Ada Lovelace (daughter of Lord Byron), a mathematics genius a century ahead of her time.
Director, Writer, Editor, Producer / TRT 82 mins / Starring Tilda Swinton, Karen Black, Timothy Leary, Thomas Jay Ryan / 1982 Sundance Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, 1999 Berlin Film Festival / NOMINATED FOR INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARD
First Person Plural, The Electronic Diaries of Lynn Hershman Leeson 1984-1996
A VIDEO confessional that records Hershman’s struggle, transformation, and transcendence as her personal story unfolds before the camera and sees the mirroring effects when personal becomes political, becomes cultural. This consists of four segments: Confessions of a Chameleon, Binge, First Person Plural and Shadow’s Song.