Lily Baldwin

Statement

Lily Baldwin is a multidisciplinary filmmaker, artist, and performer, known for her compelling and intricate narrative forms. She creates with the hopes of waking people up to new truths.

Baldwin combines her deep love of dance and film to craft stories with dreamscapes (nonverbal visceral storytelling), inviting people into provocative conversations with stories and themselves. She sources recent personal experiences in the disability world to highlight how rampant and destructive ableism is, while investigating our own internalized ableism.

“My work explores permanence, technology and intimacy as a means to expand the relevance of dance as we’ve known it. I’m a sucker for genre mashups and hybrid forms. Imagine a heady cocktail of Anne Carson and David Lynch, bespoke suits, neon cut-out one-pieces, rawness, esoterica, and the wabisabi shelfscape of my end-of-week fridge. I collaborate with artists to cultivate loud and subtle virtuosity. Ultimately, I’m committed to using a language we all speak that doesn’t lie: body.”

GlogauAIR Project

CHRONICLE OF HIP (COH) is a 90-minute feature documentary film chronicling Lily’s journey through the perfect storm of illness, pain and discovery – from crash-and-burn, to living with a rare illness in a medical system that doesn’t adequately support what it does not recognize and a societal ecosystem that dismisses a woman in pain.

This is Lily’s story as much as it is a common and archetypal tale. As her story unfolds, we meet Lily’s disabled father, along with other disabled individuals (dancers, writers, creatives, thinkers ranging in age, identity, race, demographic) who live with physical pain, illness or an unrecognized diagnosis.

Baldwin’s lens chronicles her connection to communities; seeing how her siloed journey relates to a collective body politic, and to share a platform with those whose stories are often dismissed or overlooked.

As Baldwin completes this feature film, she simultaneously investigates how the material inhabits a gallery, developing a series of small spectacles: art objects that disfigure the conventions of projection and narrative cinema.

COH is a call-to-action that demands we expand our baseline standards of normalcy, ultimately calling into question our cultures of beauty and creative style.

Installation and Video

CV Summary

EDUCATION

• University of Michigan 1996- 2000 BFA in Dance, Minor in Art History, Summa Cum Laude

FILMS & MEDIA (Abbreviated)

• CHRONICLE OF HIP slated for 2024; feature documentary film; Writer, Director
• STORIES OF THE STALKED Released March 2022; Episodic Podcast Series; Writer, Director, Host, Produced by Ventureland, Audible, and Feast Collective
• TERRAIN 2020; 40 mins; VR; Director, Co-creator, Choreographer, Performer * La Biennale di Venezia in the VR Expanded (World Premiere), China Academy of Art, Design Center Flacon Moscow, The CENTQUATRE-PARIS, ESPRONCEDA – Institute of Art & Culture, Laboratorio Aperto di Modena ex Centrale AEM, Nikolaj Kunsthal, PHI Center, Portland Art Museum & Northwest Film Center, Eye Filmmuseum, Koç University KARMA Lab
• QUICK SLICE 2019; 20 mins; digital video, installation; Director, Choreographer, Performer * New York Live Arts, Flux Factory
• THROUGH YOU 2017; 14 mins; VR; Director, Choreographer * Sundance Film Festival (World Premiere), SF International Film Festival, World VR Forum, Nantucket Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival (award-winner), San Francisco Dance Film Festival, Watershed, Phi Center, AFI Fest, Nowness (Online Premiere), and many more
• SWALLOWED 2016; 17 mins; digital video; Director, Writer, Choreographer, Performer * Criterion Channel, SXSW (World Premiere), BAMcinemaFest, Montclair Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival, Palm Springs ShortFest, part of the omnibus feature COLLECTIVE:UNCONSCIOUS
• SLEEPOVER LA 2014; 14 mins; digital video; Director, Choreographer, Performer * SXSW (World Premiere), Berlinale EFM, Cucalorus,
• SEA MEADOW 2012; 12 mins; digital video; Director, Choreographer, Performer * SXSW (World Premiere), Miami Art Basel, V&A Museum, Aesthetica Short Film Festival (award-winner) Academy-Qualifying theatrical run

AWARDS & HONORS & FELLOWSHIPS (Abbreviated)

• Creative Capital Award Short List, 2022, CHRONICLE OF HIP
• WaveFarm Media Arts Assistance Fund Individual Artist Grantee supported by NYSCA 2021, QUICK SLICE
• Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program Grantee supported by the MacArthur Foundation 2021, CHRONICLE OF HIP
• Independent Magazine’s 10 Filmmakers to Watch 2017
• Sundance Institute New Frontier / Jaunt VR Residency 2016, THROUGH YOU
• VR creator for Oculus & Kaleidoscope’s inaugural DevLab 2016, Fellow
• SXSW Gamechanger Award Nominee 2016, SWALLOWED/ COLLECTIVE:UNCONSCIOUS
• SXSW Grand Jury Award Narrative Feature Nominee 2016, SWALLOWED/ COLLECTIVE:UNCONSCIOUS
• ShortsHD Top 10 Emerging Filmmakers to Watch 2016
• Nantucket Screenwriters Colony 2014, Fellow
• Nominee for SXSW Grand Jury Award Narrative Short 2012, SEA MEADOW

TEACHING, PANELS, PRESENTATIONS, PUBLICATIONS

• Publication 2023, Interview, Mixed Realities: Gender, Precarity, and New Models of Work in the Convergence Economy, Detroit: Wayne State University Press (forthcoming)
• University of Southern California 2022, Guest artist, Media Arts + Practice; Cinema and Media Studies Divisions
• Electric South 2022, VR and 360 video teaching consultant
• Pratt Institute 2020, Guest Artist at for the class Professional Practice
• Tribeca Film Festival 2019, Juror for Our City, Our Story Competition
• University of Michigan 2018, Guest Artist at for BFA Dance department
• Sonic Union and StoryCode NYC 2018, Panelist with Jessica Brillhart
• World VR Forum 2018, Juror, and presenter
• Jacob’s Pillow 2018, PillowTalk speaker and podcast
• Outfest 2017, Panelist, hosted by New Frontier Of Storytelling
• Tribeca Film Festival 2017, Juror for Storyscapes Competition
• School of Visual Arts 2017, Guest Artist for the Masters in Directing program
• Jacksonville University 2017, Guest Artist at for MFA Choreography program
• Meet the Artist 2017, Panelist for Dance on Camera of Film at Lincoln Center
• John Hopkins University 2016, Mentor for Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund in Film & Media

Gallery