Leslie Thornton is a painter turned video and filmmaker. Her lush, complex works explore the mechanisms of desire and meaning, while probing past the boundaries of language and narrative conventions. She studied with filmmakers Hollis Frampton, Stan Brakhage, Paul Sharits and Peter Kubelka at the State University of New York/Buffalo, and with Richard Leacock and Ed Pincus at MIT. She has been honored with numerous awards, including the Maya Deren Award, the first Alpert Award in the Arts for media, two Rockefeller Fellowships, and grants from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, Jerome Foundation, and Art Matters. Thornton’s film and media works have been exhibited worldwide, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Biennial Exhibition; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Rotterdam International Film Festival; New York Film Festival; Bordeaux; Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley; and festivals in Oberhausen, Graz, Mannheim, Berlin, Austin, Toronto, Tokyo and Seoul. Her ongoing work Peggy and Fred in Hell has been cited in several “Years Best” lists, including the Village Voice and The New York Times, and she was the only woman experimental filmmaker included in Cahiers du cinema “60 most important American Directors” issue. Thornton is Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, and a Visiting Professor in the Transmedia Programme at the Academy Sint Lukas in Brussels, Belgium.
