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Sasha Waters[1][2] also known as Sasha Waters Freyer, is an American documentary and experimental filmmaker, feminist and educator. She has produced and directed twenty films,[3] most of which originate in 16mm and except for her first documentary has edited all of her films. Her films have screened at the Brooklyn Museum,[4] the Museum of the Moving Image, Union Docs[5] and the Gene Siskel Film Center. Selected festivals include IMAGES in Toronto and the Telluride Film Festival.[6] She is also a professor of Photography and Film at VCU School of the Arts in Richmond, Virginia.[7]

Early life and education

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Sasha Waters was born in Brooklyn and educated at the University of Michigan and the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she earned her BFA in Photography in 1991.[8] She earned her MFA in Film & Media Arts from Temple University in Philadelphia.[9]

Career

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Waters began her academic career at the University of Iowa in 2000, teaching there until the end of 2012.[10] From 2013 to 2019, she served as Chair of the VCU School of the Arts Department of Photography + Film[11] where she is currently a Professor.

Waters co-produced her first film, Whipped (1998), with Iana Porter. It is a 16mm documentary portrait of three professional New York dominatrixes.[12][13] Whipped premiered at the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, screened at the 1998 Chicago Underground Film Festival,[14] and was called a "likable, low-key demystification of a potentially lurid subject," by Variety.[15]

Waters' second film, Razing Appalachia chronicled a years-long struggle against the expansion of a mountaintop removal mine by Arch Coal in rural West Virginia.[16][17] Reviewing the documentary for The New Yorker when it aired on the PBS series Independent Lens in 2003, Nancy Franklin wrote that it was a good example of "what makes public TV valuable."[18]

Chekhov for Children (2010) documents a full-length production of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya that was staged in 1979 at Symphony Space on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Directed by Phillip Lopate, the play's cast and crew were made up entirely of fifth- and sixth-grade students from P.S. 75. It premiered in the US at the Telluride Film Festival[19] and at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.[20] It was listed as one of the "Best Undistributed Films" of the year in the IndieWire Annual Critics Survey, 2010.[21]

Waters' feature documentary Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable[22] screened theatrically and at festivals in 2018. It was called one of the year's best by The New Yorker's Richard Brody[23] and won a Special Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival.[24] The film aired on the PBS series American Masters in April 2019.[25]

Since 2019, Waters has been working on a documentary on the artist Bruce Conner and his unfinished film on the gospel group The Soul Stirrers titled Trouble Don't Last.[26][27] She has also completed a trilogy of experimental short films that turn an anti-colonial and feminist lens onto the history of photography and cinema – cyanotypes in Ghost Protists, magic lantern glass slides in Fragile, and popular romance in Ashes of Roses.[28]  

Awards and honors

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Filmography

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  • Whipped (1998), co-produced with Iana Porter – documentary, 60 mins[13]
  • This Existence is Material (2003)
  • Razing Appalachia (2003) – documentary, 72 mins[16]
  • The Waiting Time (2005)
  • Her Heart is Washed in Water and then Weighed (2006)
  • This American Gothic (2008)
  • You Can See the Sun in Late December (2010)
  • Chekhov for Children (2010) – documentary[36]
  • An Incomplete History of the Travelogue, 1925 (2012)
  • Our Summer Made Her Light Escape (2012)
  • An Incomplete History of Pornography, 1979 (2013)
  • Burn Out the Day (2014)
  • A Partial History of the Natural World, 1965 (2015)
  • Garden of Stone (2015)
  • dragons & seraphim (2017)
  • Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable (2018) – documentary[37]
  • Respiration (2019)
  • Fragile (2022)
  • Ashes of Roses (2023)
  • Ghost Protists (2024)

References

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  1. ^ "2024 Full Schedule". WOEFF. Retrieved April 26, 2024.
  2. ^ "• Ashes of Roses: Films by Sasha Waters Freyer". Retrieved April 26, 2024.
  3. ^ "Filmmaker | Pieshake | United States". Pieshake. Retrieved April 26, 2024.
  4. ^ "Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable | This Week in New York". Retrieved April 26, 2024.
  5. ^ "UnionDocsMothering Every Day". UnionDocs. Retrieved April 26, 2024.
  6. ^ Hernandez, Eugene (September 2, 2010). "Docs Top 2010 Telluride Roster". IndieWire. Retrieved April 26, 2024.
  7. ^ "Sasha Waters". VCU School of the Arts. February 10, 2020. Archived from the original on May 14, 2023. Retrieved June 2, 2023.
  8. ^ Waters Freyer, Sasha (July 29, 2021). "Interview with Sasha Waters Freyer". Medium (Interview). Interviewed by Marci Lindsay.
  9. ^ Waters Freyer, Sasha (May 23, 2013). "Sasha Waters Freyer". videoart.net (Interview). Interviewed by Katya Yakubov. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved September 5, 2016.
  10. ^ "Durham and Waters Freyer awarded AHI grants for 2012-13 | Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies". clas.uiowa.edu. Retrieved June 22, 2023.
  11. ^ Whitten, Rachael (January 16, 2018). "Q&A: Sasha Waters-Freyer". Richmond Magazine. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  12. ^ Alspector, Lisa. "Whipped". Chicago Reader. Retrieved February 9, 2020.
  13. ^ a b Harvey, Dennis (March 20, 2000). "Whipped". Variety. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  14. ^ Reader, Chicago (August 13, 1998). "Chicago Underground Film Festival". Chicago Reader. Retrieved June 22, 2023.
  15. ^ Harvey, Dennis (March 20, 2000). "Whipped". Variety. Retrieved April 26, 2024.
  16. ^ a b Nelson, Rob. "Razing Appalachia". Mother Jones. Retrieved June 6, 2023.
  17. ^ Harvey, Dennis (June 19, 2002). "Razing Appalachia". Variety. Retrieved June 6, 2023.
  18. ^ Franklin, Nancy (May 18, 2003). "The Vision Thing". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  19. ^ "The Telluride film festival announces lineup". tracking-board.com. September 3, 2010. Retrieved June 7, 2023.
  20. ^ "Not Kidding". Daily Tiger (in Dutch). International Film Festival Rotterdam. February 1, 2011. p. 17. Retrieved June 5, 2023 – via Issuu.
  21. ^ "IndieWire Best Undistributed Film Critics Survey, 2010" (PDF). haosfilm.com.[dead link]
  22. ^ Scott, A. O. (September 18, 2018). "Review: 'Garry Winogrand' Pictures an Artist and His World". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  23. ^ Brody, Richard (September 15, 2018). "How Garry Winogrand Transformed Street Photography". The New Yorker. Retrieved February 9, 2020.
  24. ^ Whittaker, Richard (March 13, 2018). "SXSW Film Awards Announced". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  25. ^ "Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable". PBS. March 13, 2019. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  26. ^ Baldwin, Brent. "Gospel Gold". Style Weekly. Retrieved June 7, 2023.
  27. ^ "Trouble Don't Last: Bruce Conner and the Soul Stirrers (working title)". Catapult Film Fund. Retrieved June 7, 2023.
  28. ^ "Filmmaker | Pieshake | United States". Pieshake. Retrieved April 26, 2024.
  29. ^ "Sasha Freyer - Artist". MacDowell. Retrieved June 7, 2023.
  30. ^ Seery, John (July 4, 2006). "American Gothic". HuffPost. Retrieved June 22, 2023.
  31. ^ Ugincius, Leila. "VCU School of the Arts professors receive prestigious NEA grants". VCU News. Retrieved June 22, 2023.
  32. ^ "VCUarts wins $15,000 grant from National Endowment for the Arts". VCUarts. June 16, 2020. Retrieved June 22, 2023.
  33. ^ "Filmmaker Sasha Waters Freyer receives 2016 Helen Hill Award". The Orphan Film Symposium. December 28, 2015. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  34. ^ "New Waves 2016". Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. Archived from the original on April 27, 2016.
  35. ^ "VMFA 2019–20 Fellowship Program Supports 28 Student and Professional Artists" (PDF) (Press release). Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. February 12, 2019. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  36. ^ Taubin, Amy (October 19, 2010). "Amy Taubin on Chekhov for Children". Artforum. Retrieved June 7, 2023.
  37. ^ Turan, Kenneth (October 4, 2018). "Review: 'Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable' explores the artist who pushed his craft to its limits". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 6, 2023.
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