Film

  • The New Bauhaus
  • GRANTEE
    Alysa Nahmias, Petter Ringbom, Marquise Stillwell & Erin Wright
    GRANT YEAR
    2018

László Moholy-Nagy, Light Space Modulator, 2017, Chicago, IL. Courtesy of Opendox.

As the Nazis took over Germany, many of the displaced Bauhaus masters found refuge in the United States. In 1937, László Moholy-Nagy came to Chicago to start America's most influential midcentury school of design, the New Bauhaus. The school was far from successful initially but, through its various incarnations, Moholy-Nagy and his New Bauhaus forever transformed design, photography, and arts education in America. The film's narrative weaves original interviews with archival footage, voiceover, and stylized filming of documents and artwork. The result is a new perspective view of a man who was ahead of his time and is increasingly relevant in today's contemporary art and architecture discourses. With a subjective, feminist approach to design history and the creative process, The New Bauhaus is a film about art, vision, and perseverance in a tumultuous time.

Alysa Nahmias' debut feature documentary about Cuba's revolutionary architecture, Unfinished Spaces, codirected with Benjamin Murray, won a 2012 Independent Spirit Award, was selected for Sundance Film Forward, and is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Production and distribution partners on her films have included Netflix, ITVS, Al-Jazeera, Kino Lorber, and HBO. Her work has premiered at Sundance, South By Southwest (SXSW), Sheffield DocFest, and the Berlinale. She recently produced the Sundance jury award-winning film Unrest (2017) directed by Jennifer Brea. Nahmias' producing credits also include Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq directed by Nancy Buirski with creative advisor Martin Scorsese; Shield and Spear directed by Petter Ringbom; and No Light and No Land Anywhere directed by Amber Sealey. She was consulting producer on Academy Award-nominated director Jennifer Redfearn's Tocando La Luz. Nahmias is a 2017 Sundance Fellow and was a 2013 Film Independent Fellow. She holds an MArch from Princeton University.

Petter Ringbom's debut feature documentary, The Russian Winter, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2012. His follow up, Shield and Spear, premiered at Toronto's Hot Docs in 2014, and won the Silver Price at UK's Passion for Freedom Awards. Petter's films have screened at IDFA, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Hammer Museum, Moscow International Film Festival, and Gothenburg International Film Festival. His art video, Questions for My Father, was hailed as a "genuine sleeper" by the New York Times, was selected for the Art Video program at Art Basel Miami, and shown at Wexner Center for the Arts, Utah Museum of Contemporary Arts, and Susanne Vielmetter Projects. He has been a Film Independent Fast Track Fellow, a Gotland Film Lab resident at the Ingmar Bergman Estate, a Midpoint Feature Launch participant, and a Berlinale Talent.

Erin Wright is a producer and director of artist initiatives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Her 20 years of experience in the art world at Sotheby's, Lannan Foundation, Gagosian Gallery, and LACMA has culminated as a producer of projects with artists and filmmakers. She has been producing documentary films about artists and their work for almost a decade, including films on John Baldessari, Michael Heizer, Robert Irwin, Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha, James Turrell, and Peter Zumthor. She has collaborated with and commissioned work from filmmakers such as Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, Lance Accord, Doug Pray, Lucy Walker, Jessica Yu, Pippa Bianco, and Lisanne Skyler as a producer for LACMA film. These films have been shown at major festivals including South by Southwest (SXSW), Los Angeles Film Festival, Sheffield Doc Fest, DOC NYC, and AFI Docs.

Marquise Stillwell is the executive producer for Shield and Spear, Unspoken, and a number of short films. He is the founder of Opendox, a design consultancy that provides talent and resources into ambitious and innovative ventures. Stillwell served as an advisor to the filmmaker Paul Devlin (SlamNation, Power Trip, Blast!) and has strategized for the poet Taylor Mali (featured in the film SlamNation). He has contributed to various programs at the Joyce Theatre, the New Museum, and MCA Denver. He currently sits on the board of the Andrew Goodman Foundation and the Lowline Underground Park.