Abigail Severance

Statement

Abigail Severance is a Los Angeles-based artist making films and other images about nostalgia, flawed history and queer thought. She has shown at Sundance, The Broad, MOCA/LA, Studio Museum Harlem and Wexner Center, among other spaces. With rich color, intimate composition and layered sound, her films exist between documentary, fiction and abstraction, using moving image as a meditative practice for contemplation.

Severance’s recent work delves into post-pandemic fragility, asking how entropy might stir radical imagination and how queer futurity might activate a sense of longing for something beyond the present. For her, working with the moving image means constantly chasing time; its very impermanence a haptic, existential form of witnessing where we tumble through memory, anticipation, longing and back again. She aims to use such sensory images as a language of resistance, both as a refuge for the weary soul and as a space for dreaming radical possibilities.

GlogauAIR Project

Abigail Severance makes films and other images about nostalgia, material history, and the queer mind. Her work has screened at the Broad Museum, MOCA/LA, Sundance, REDCAT, Studio Museum of Harlem, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Wexner Center for the Arts, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Curta Cinema Rio, Women in the Director’s Chair, London LBGT Festival, MIX, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, among other sites. Her essay film ACADIA, about nationalist nostalgia and queer origin stories, is currently in post. She has received a Fulbright, a Film Independent fellowship, and a CalArts Research & Practice Grant for WE THE DEVOTED, a near-future narrative about borders and labor, made collectively with its ensemble cast. She has been faculty at the CalArts School of Film/Video since 2009 and served as Dean 2019-2024.

CV Summary

RESIDENCIES, FELLOWSHIPS + AWARDS

• 2024 Glogauair Residency, Berlin
• 2023 Flaherty Film Seminar: Queer World Mending
• 2022 Flaherty Film Seminar: Continents of Drifting Clouds
• 2020 Fulbright (awarded), Univ. College Cork, The Edge of the Flat Earth (canceled; COVID)
• 2018 Research + Practice Grant, CalArts, We The Devoted
• 2015 Faculty Development Grant, CalArts, Acadia
• 2014 Creative Capital: On Our Radar
• 2010 Artist-in-Residence, Stonelake Farm, Humboldt, California
• 2009 FIND Fellowship, Screenwriting + Directing Labs, The Summer We Drowned
• 2004 Spotlight Award for Directing, Saint Henry
• 2002 Wasserman Fellowship, Come Nightfall
• 2002 Carl David Fellowship for LBGT Filmmakers
• 2000 Best Gay/Lesbian Film, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Pump
• 1999 Director’s Citation Award, Black Maria Film + Video Festival, Pump

WORKSAMPLES (moving image)

• Hotel La Casona (in progress)
• Acadia (in progress)
• Kinesthesia Series (2014)
• Evidence (2014)

SCREENINGS + EXHIBITIONS (select)

• 2021 Pump Ann Arbor Film Festival, New Queer Cinema retrospective
• 2018 Evidence The Broad, Los Angeles (in En Cuatro Patas/On All Fours)
• 2017 But How We Long ATA, San Francisco // Last Projects, LA
• 2015 Kinesthesia Series REDCAT, LA, Transforming Spaces: New Work from L.A. Filmmakers // Outsider Arts Festival, Austin // Antimatter, British Columbia
• 2014 Evidence Commissioned by VisualAIDS for 25th Anniversary of A DAY WITHOUT ART. Studio (w. Julie Tolentino) Museum of Harlem // New Museum, NY // MOCA LA // Dallas Museum of Art // Andy Warhol Museum // Brooklyn Museum // Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston + over 50 more
• 2013 Kinesthesia Series Feral Studios, Joshua Tree // Jenny Mi Amor Houston Queer Film Festival // Boston LBGT Film Festival
• 2012 Kinesthesia Series Proteus Gowanus, New York in Negro Marfil/Ivory Black // Jenny Mi Amor Curta Cinema, Rio // Mezipatra, Prague // Melbourne Queer Film Festival // Frameline, San Francisco // Outfest, LA // Austin Gay + Lesbian Festival // Image + Nation, Montreal
• 2011 Hard Times The Ruckus // Music Fog // Jenny Mi Amor Antimatter, BC // Eye Witness Performance space, London // Feral Studio, Joshua Tree
• 2009 Eye Witness Phyllis Stein Gallery, LA
• 2004 Saint Henry Los Angeles Film Festival // Nat’l Museum of Women in the Arts // American Cinematheque, LA // Directors Guild of America // Palm Springs Intl Shorts Festival // Women in the Director’s Chair, Chicago–National Tour // Frameline // London Lesbian + Gay Film Festival // Budapest Lesbian + Gay Film Festival // New Festival, NY // Outfest // Image + Nation
• 2003 Come Nightfall Sundance Film Festival // Los Angeles Film Festival // Ann Arbor // Women in the Director’s Chair // Frameline // London Lesbian + Gay Festival // Outfest
• 2002 Siren Sundance // Ann Arbor // New Festival // Outfest // Image + Nation // Berlin Lesbian Film Festival // MIX, New York + Sao Paolo // Women in the Director’s Chair // Wake Wexner Center for the Arts // HBO // Sundance Channel // Ann Arbor // Pesaro Film Festival, Italy // European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck, Germany // San Francisco Cinematheque // Nashville Film Festival // Come Nightfall Austin Lesbian + Gay Film Festival // MIX, New York + Sao Paolo
• 2001 Bone Wish Los Angeles Film Festival // Ann Arbor // Sao Paolo Shorts // New Festival // Outfest // Austin Lesbian + Gay Festival // Berlin Lesbian Film Festival // Siren Frameline // Dublin Lesbian + Gay Festival // Pump Tokyo Intl Lesbian + Gay Film Festival
• 2000 Pump Ann Arbor Film Festival (best queer short) // Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Bay Area Now 2 // BFI UK Tour–26 cities // Los Angeles Film Festival // Hamptons Intl Film Festival // Black Maria Film Festival (director’s citation) // Chicago Intl Lesbian + Gay Film Festival (best short) // Verzaubert Tour, Germany–5 cities // Sensory Perceptions, Portland (best short) // New Festival, NY // Image + Nation // Berlin Lesbian Film Festival // London Lesbian + Gay Film Festival
• 1999 Pump Frameline // Cork Intl Film Festival // Film Arts Festival // Outfest

PRESENTATIONS + ARTIST TALKS

• 2019 The Horrible Image: Aesthetic Strategies for Representing Misery + Violence , AFI Directing Workshop, LA
• 2018 Generative Dysphorias in the Homeward-Bound Essay Film , Visible Evidence XXVI, USC
• 2018 Manifesto: Radical Hope (keynote) & The Horrible Image: Ethics + Aesthetics of Representing the Abject, Creative Research Conference, Ibero American Association, Mexico City
• 2018 CalArts: Pioneering Radical Arts Education , 22nd Festival de Cine de Lima, Perú
• 2016 Visually Speaking: Non-Fiction Poetics, Panel with Lourdes Portillo, Bassma Al-sharif, presented by of The Flaherty Seminar (moderator) , IDA International Documentary Conference, LA
• 2014 Improvisation & Experimentation in Teaching Narrative Cinema Forms Chapman University
• 2011 The L.A. Rebellion (seminar) , CalArts, UCLA Film & TV Archive + Getty’s Pacific Standard Time 1945-1985
• 2007 Aesthetics of Digital Narratives, University of Southern California

TEACHING/ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE

• 2019-2024 Dean, CalArts School of Film/Video, Valencia, California
• 2009-present Faculty, Film Directing Program, CalArts School of Film/Video (sabbatical 2024-2025)
• 2005-2009 Special Faculty, Program in Film and Video, CalArts School of Film/Video
• 2006 Lecturer, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego

EDUCATION

• MFA UCLA — School of Theater, Film + Digital Media
• BA Hampshire College — Cultural Studies, Latin American focus

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