Martha Swetzoff
  • ABOUT
  • FILMS
  • GALLERY
  • ABOUT
  • FILMS
  • GALLERY

ABOUT

Music, film, performance and technologies that integrate these have interwoven in my career. I’ve made documentaries, music video, and experimental pieces using staged and nonfiction elements and sound. My hour long NEA- supported documentary, Theme: Murder, about the unsolved murder in 1968 of my father, an art dealer and closeted gay man, is distributed by New Day Films – please see award and broadcast history here https://www.newday.com/film/theme-murder. I attended Harvard but dropped out for four years to play in an all female punk rock band in Boston, then NYC in 1981 where I worked wth performance artist Julia Heyward as a musician and cinematographer for 16mm visual elements of our live show. I also played with John Zorn and others in NYC.

I attended the Media Lab at MIT then worked on the Montage 111 NLE, moving to HBO’s Bright, Kaufman, Crane series “Dream On”- a beta site for our systems, as assistant editor.  I was Creative Director of a start-up in Los Angeles, Commotion New Media, where we developed interactive music and entertainment content. Projects included the interactive LAUNCH entertainment magazine and a web-only Yoko Ono piece. I have created video elements for live events and theater, from Meatloaf’s Live tour and the original production of The Laramie Project. I’ve taught film, video and new media production at Harvard, UCLA and RISD, from beginning to senior levels and oversaw hundreds of student projects in narrative, doc and hybrid live-action and animation, as well as teaching a centennial celebration class on DADA.

I am a still photographer and my work has shown at The Wingspread Gallery, The Pemetic Gallery and The Owl’s Head Museum of Transportation.

I am currently developing a dramatic, limited series based on the life of Emmy Hennings, co-founder of The Cabaret Voltaire and a non-fiction project examining past, present and future definitions of  “work”.

Contact

mswetzoff@gmail.com

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