Moira Sullivan

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Moira Sullivan
Moira Sullivan

Moira Sullivan is an international lecturer, film critic, and experimental filmmaker based in Stockholm, San Francisco and Paris. She is one of the world's experts on the work of the legendary filmmaker Maya Deren, and created a website dedicated to her work: The Maya Deren Forum.

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[edit] Biography

Moira Sullivan wrote her doctoral thesis in 1997 on the legendary filmmaker Maya Deren - An Anagram of the Ideas of Filmmaker Maya Deren based on research at the Boston University Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center and archival films at Anthology Film Archives in New York. She was awarded a doctorate at Stockholm University the same year and received her diploma in the audience of the King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden at the historic Stockholm City Hall "Blå Hallen", home of the Nobel Prize Banquet. Dr. Sullivan has been invited to special programs honoring filmmaker Maya Deren in Italy, France, Germany, Sweden and the USA and contributed to the anthology on Deren edited by Bill Nichols in 2000 entitled [1] Maya Deren and the American Avantgarde.

Dr. Sullivan studied film at a special program for small film production at St Erik's Folkhögskola in Stockholm. Her student exam film concerned a threatened housing area which was to be gentrified called Kvarteret Mullvaden. An experimental film and her Swedish experience in filmmaking garnished her acceptance to the Cinema Studies Department at Stockholm University and later to the Graduate Cinema Studies Department at San Francisco State. She is currently a guest lecturer in cinema studies at universities in Sweden, Spain, Germany, Italy and the USA.

Sullivan was awarded a scholarship to study in Sweden through the University of California Education Abroad Program to Lund University in 1976. She was a Humanities Honor Student in the political science department and studied comparative literature, art, international politics, national economics and Scandinavian studies. As a distinguished member of the University of California, Riverside Debate team she was awarded 2nd place in California in Lincoln Douglas Debate, and numerous top speaker awards at public speaking and debate tournaments. She has worked with international cultural exchange and language studies at higher institutions of learning in Sweden and the USA such as University of California Berkeley, Berklee College of Music in Boston, San Francisco State University, and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm , and at special programs at universities and art schools in Italy, France, Germany and Spain. In 1995 she was one of the first women to register her partnership after the Swedish government passed same sex civil union legislation. In 2000 Sullivan became a citizen of Sweden, making her one of the first dual nationals from the USA, after the State Department allowed Americans to become Swedish citizens. The restriction was in place because of statements made by the late Olof Palme criticizing US foreign policy in Vietnam.

[edit] Film Exhibition and Education

In the 1980's and 1990's Sullivan actively promoted international women's cultural exchange in film and media and martial arts at the Stockholm Kvinnohuset (Women's House) until its closure in 2003 and at Kvinnohöjden(The Women's High School). An historic town hall debate on queer and radical feminist politics was held in the autumn of 2003 which preceded the demise of the house. On the panel were Dr. Sullivan, Ulrika Dahl, queer feminist, Tiina Rosenberg, queer feminist and professor of theater at Stockholm University, filmmaker Lena Einhorn and other supporters of Kvinnohuset.

Sullivan established an international Swedish cinema forum at Kvinnohuset called Freja Film. The forum was patterned after the cinema collective Cinemine in Amsterdam where films were followed by discussion with the public in order to promote cultural understanding. Among the many guests invited to Freja Film was filmmaker Barbara Hammer and the Swedish actress Pia Garde who is currently working on the memoirs of the late Swedish writer Karin Boye. The UN declared Freja Film at a special conference in Amsterdam to be the international contact organization for women's films. Sullivan is currently a member of the European Coordination of Film Festivals, Working Group for women which meets at the Créteil Films de Femmes Festival in Paris. Sullivan also has conducted workshops on lesbian film at Kvinnohöjden in Borlänge Sweden. She was one of the original members of the Swedish artist's ateljé collective "Zinobra" in Nacka where she had a cinema studio.

[edit] Filmography

Sullivan's experimental films made in Skala Eressos, Lesbos in [Greece] and in Stockholm, Sweden have been shown in Sweden, Greece, USA and France.
1997: At Land Two, reconstruction of Maya Deren's At Land.
1998: VG , a spoof on films featuring monsters with teeth. Appeared on the French TV station Canal Plus, and at the Bay Area Burning Man.
2003: On the Highway with My Girlfriend: A Road Movie. Selected for the Denver Underground Film Festival.
2004: Sappho's Postcards.
2005: The True Story of Antiopi.

[edit] Film Festivals

Sullivan's website CinéFemme is a collection of articles on international women in the media. .
She regularly covers Créteil Films de Femmes Festival (Nordic contact person) and Cineffable Lesbian Film Festival,.

Other festivals regularly covered:

[edit] Publication

Sullivan is a staff writer for Movie Magazine International, San Francisco and can be heard every week nationally and on web satellite around the world.
Sullivan is also a regular contributor to:

  • Greencine, San Francisco.
  • The Local, Stockholm.
  • The Swedish Bulletin, Stockholm.
  • Film International, London.
  • Swedish National Radio, Stockholm.
  • The Gothenburg International Film Festival, Swedish Bulletin 2008
  • The Films of Roy Andersson, Swedish Bulletin 2008
  • Tribute to Ingmar Bergman, Swedish Bulletin 2007
  • Ingmar Bergman’s Treasures Go Online, Swedish Bulletin 2007
  • "As It Is In Heaven" Wins Many Hearts Overseas, Swedish Bulletin 2007
  • The Cinemateque Program in Stockholm, presenting Anita Ekberg from La Dolce Vita, Swedish Bulletin, 2006
  • “Jane Fonda Visits Stockholm”,Swedish Bulletin 2006
  • “Guldbagge, National Swedish Cinema Awards” Swedish Bulletin 2006
  • “Gothenburg International Film Festival”, Swedish Bulletin 2006
  • “The Films of Hayao Miyasaki”, Zendo Tidskrift, 2006
  • “Asian Films at the Venice International Film Festival”, Film International, November 2004
  • “A Hole in My Heart”, Film International, November 2004
  • “Good Morning Night”, Film International, September 2004
  • “Fahrenheit 9/11”, Film International, September 2004
  • “Monster”, Film International, July 2004
  • “Maya Deren's Ethnographic Representation of Myth and Ritual in Haiti”, Maya Deren and the Avantgarde, edited by Bill Nichols, University of California Press, 2001.
  • " Lesbographia", paper presented at "Affective Encounters", Turku 2001. University of Turku/School of Arts Literature and Music publication series. Keynote Speaker: Teresa de Lauretis.
  • "Outsiders in New Swedish Film", Screentalk, Denmark, 2001.
  • "The Virtual Subject: From Blade Runner to eXistenZ", Virtual Film Festival, Falun, 2002. Keynote speaker, member of jury.
  • "Operations of Perception and Narration" paper presented at Virtual Film Festival, Borlänge, 2000. Keynote speaker, member of jury.
  • "The Lesbian Look in the Movies: a Feminist Film Perspective", 1st Swedish Academic Conference on Queer theory, Lund University, October 1998. Keynote Speakers: Lillian Faderman, David Halperin.
  • "An Anagram of the Idea of Filmmaker Maya Deren: Creative Work in Motion Pictures, Stockholm, Sweden, 1997". Doctoral thesis, Stockholm University.
  • "The Unconventional and the Conventional, Swedish Women in Film", in Films de Femmes: Six Générations de Réalisatrices, Editions Alternatives, Paris, France, 1999.
  • "Interview with Swedish producer Lisbet Gabrielson", Swedish Women in Film, #2, 1999.
  • "Maya Deren’s Ethnographic Discourse", Transfiguring the Work of Maya Deren, San Francisco, State University, 1996.
  • "An Anagram of the Historical Film Ideas of Maya Deren", Nordic Academic Association, Scandinavian forum for critical studies of film and culture, 1993, (Moderators, Jackie Stacy, GB: (ed.) Screen; Star Gazing Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship: Richard Dyer, GB: (ed.) BFI; Gays in Film).
  • "An Anagram of the Historical Film Ideas of Maya Deren", Stockholm University, 1994.
  • "The Mortal Me, the Immortal Myself: The Use of Myth in the Films of Maya Deren", Stockholm University, 1991.
  • "The Use of Ritual in the Films of Maya Deren", Stockholm University, 1989.
  • "Tunna väggar i ’Kvinnorummet" (Thin Walls in the Woman’s Room), 4/95, Kvinnobulletinen (Women’s Bulletin) Stockholm
  • "Hundra Pionjärer från igår och idag: Ut ur mörkret" (A Hundred Pioneers from Yesterday and Today, Créteil); "Kvinnors Blick"(The Female Gaze), Kvinnobulletinen, 2/95.
  • "Våld and Sex på Löpande Band"(Violence and Sex on Festival Assembly Line: Stockholm Film Festival), Kvinnobulletinen. 1/95
  • "Deneuve och Könsroller på Lyckad Filmfestival" (Catherine Deneuve and Gender Roles at Film Festival, Créteil) 2/94 Kvinnobulletinen.
  • "Nya åskådare studier i gender" (New spectator studies on gender) Chaplin: Journal of Swedish Film Institute. May 1995
  • ”Hoppa Mellan Kanalerna ” (Channel-Switching) May 1994 Chaplin
  • ”Gud och lesbisk kärlek” (God and lesbian love, Créteil) May 24 1995, Aftonbladet.
  • ”En nya vågen filmare från Hollywood”, (‘New Wave’Filmmaker from Hollywood-Ed Wood). June 19 1995, Aftonbladet

[edit] Professional Societies

[edit] External links