Sasha Waters

Sasha Waters (also known as Sasha Waters Freyer; born November 19, 1968) is an American filmmaker and a professor [1] of Film and Art Foundations at the #1 public Fine Arts School in the country, Virginia Commonwealth University.[2]

Since 1998, Waters has produced and directed 18 documentary and experimental films, 14 of which originate in 16mm. Her films include Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable.[3][4][5]

Early life and education

Sasha Waters 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, Barbara Kopple and Rocky Collins among others. While working for Kopple, Sasha met Iana Porter with whom she founded the New York production company Emotion Motion Pictures, Inc.

Waters earned her MFA in Film & Media Arts from Temple University in 1999, where she studied with experimental filmmakers Lynne Sachs[6] and Rea Tajiri.

Teaching career

In 2000, Waters accepted a position teaching filmmaking at the University of Iowa.

In 2013, Waters left the University of Iowa to serve as the Chair (2013 - 2019) of the Department of Photography + Film at VCU School of the Art in Richmond, VA, where she currently teaches BFA and MFA students working in photography, film and media.[7]

Filmmaking

With the exception of her first documentary (Whipped, 1998),[8] 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 11 of them. Trained in photography and the documentary tradition, Waters' films explore outsiders, misfits and everyday radicals.

At the University of Iowa she developed a body of personal experimental and essay films. While Waters' films screen primarily in festival/museum black box spaces, she has also shown in galleries.

Whipped

Waters co-produced her first film with Iana Porter, 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. The end credits of Whipped featured an otherwise unpublished cover track of the song "Hopelessly Devoted to You" performed by the 1990s alt-country band, Clem Snide.

Razing Appalachia

Her film Razing Appalachia,[9] 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.[10]

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."[11]

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.

Chekhov for Children

Her 2010 documentary Chekhov for Children,[12] premiered in the U.S. at the Telluride Film Festival and internationally at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.[13] Chekhov for Children was listed as one of the Best Undistributed Films of the year in the IndieWiRE Annual Critics Survey, 2010.[14]

Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable

Her most recent feature documentary, Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable,[15][16][17] 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,[18] and won a Special Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival.[19] Winogrand aired on the PBS series American Masters in April 2019.[20]

Awards and recognition

Waters 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] and Media Arts Production Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2020, 2015 and 2007; Waters has been a Fellow at The MacDowell Colony (2017, 2002, 1999), Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Her experimental 16mm short Our Summer Made her Light Escape was included in the 2013 Senses of Cinema World Poll;[24] Our Summer was also included on the Cinefile "Best of the Decade" list, along with her experimental shorts A Partial History of the Natural World, 1965 and dragons & seraphim.

Waters 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.[25]

Personal life

At the University of Iowa she met her husband, media and social practice artist John D. Freyer.

References
  1. https://arts.vcu.edu/community/vcuarts-faculty-and-staff/directory/sasha-waters-freyer/
  2. "U.S. News & World Report Graduate School rankings".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. Saperstein, Pat (2019-02-13). "Garry Winogrand Documentary Casts New Light on Mid-Century Street Photographer". Variety. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. "Sasha Waters Freyer". Vlog.videoart.net. 2013-05-23. Retrieved 2016-09-05.
  7. "VCU Faculty Bio".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. Alspector, Lisa. "Whipped". Chicago Reader. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  9. Nelson, Rob. "Razing Appalachia". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  10. "Independent Lens - Independent Documentary Films". PBS. Retrieved 2016-09-05.
  11. Franklin, Nancy (2003-05-19). "The Vision Thing". ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2019-01-15.
  12. "Amy Taubin on Chekhov for Children". www.artforum.com. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  13. "IFFR Daily Tiger 2011".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  14. "IndieWire Best Undistributed Film Critics Survey, 2010" (PDF).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  15. "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.
  16. "'Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  17. Eggebeen, Greg (2018-10-10). "This Forgotten Street Photographer Shot Some of Our Most Iconic Images". Vice. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  18. Brody, Richard. "How Garry Winogrand Transformed Street Photography". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  19. Whittaker, Richard (March 13, 2018). "SXSW Film Awards Announced". www.austinchronicle.com. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  20. "Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable | About | American Masters | PBS". American Masters. 2019-03-13. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
  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".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  23. "New Waves 2016, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art Awards Announcement" (PDF).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  24. "2013 World Poll – Part 2". Senses of Cinema. 2014-01-06. Retrieved 2020-02-10.
  25. Schultz-Figueroa, Benjamin (2018-03-05). "FEMEXFILMARCHIVE with Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2020-02-09.
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