BA, Bennington College. MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. An international award-winning filmmaker, educator and 2021 Creative Capital Awardee, Rosskam's most recent feature-length hybrid documentary, Desire Lines (2024), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it also received the NEXT Jury Award. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it a film with “intelligence and heart.” Previously, his feature-length documentary, Paternal Rites (2018), premiered at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight and went on to win several festival awards. Joshua Bursting of Criterion Cast calls the film, “A breathtaking experience that finds a level of intimacy few films are ever willing to...simply a film unlike any you’ve ever seen before.” Rosskam is also the director of the award-winning films Dance, Dance, Evolution (2019), Something to Cry About (2018), Thick Relations (2012), against a trans narrative (2009), and transparent (2005). His work has screened around the world, including at the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, British Film Institute, Arsenal Berlin, Anthology Film Archives, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Gene Siskel Film Center, Sundance, Chicago International Film Festival, Provincetown International Film Festival, BFI Flare, DocLisboa, Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, Schwules Museum Berlin, NewFest, and Frameline. Rosskam has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, ISSUE Project Room, Marble House, PLAYA, and ACRE. Additionally, he is a noted lecturer, speaker, and professor, who has held positions at the University of Maryland–Baltimore County, Hampshire College, SUNY Old Westbury, and Purdue. SLC, 2021–2022; 2025–
Previous Courses
Filmmaking and Moving Image Arts
Activating the Archive in Documentary Filmmaking
Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Spring
FILM 3113
Prerequisite: prior experience in film/video production
In this course, students will produce a semester-long work of nonfiction film emerging from, or creatively activating, archival materials. Students will engage with scholarly and creative works that pose a series of complex questions regarding archival ownership and access, power, appropriation, and the possibilities for individual and collective transformation. The practice of making new films from recycled fragments of history opens exciting opportunities for revisiting past events. Crucially, it also invites students to reflect critically on the histories of image making and to ask themselves how artists negotiate their place within the archive and within history while also approaching their work with rigor. Students will explore a variety of sources and methodologies for this work, including compilation, found-footage and other remix practices, appropriation, speculative histories, home movies, ephemera, embodiment, memes, and fiction films. Along with producing a short film/video, students will also gain practical skills for working effectively with archives, librarians, and other rights holders, as well as navigating issues around fair use and copyright.
Faculty
Research as Practice: Developing the Documentary
Open, Seminar—Fall
In this course, students will learn about the preproduction process for documentary filmmaking through exercises in idea generation, research, proposal writing, fundraising, impact campaigns, team building, and distribution. The broader goal is to develop each student’s unique voice while exploring issues of aesthetics, ethics and responsibility, experimentation, and the current sociocultural context of nonfiction film production. The majority of the semester will be spent on assignments to help each student conceptualize and develop a documentary idea. Over the past decade, documentary has experienced a creative explosion alongside an expansion of its potential for commercial success. Through readings, screenings, and class discussions, we will consider the limitless possibilities of nonfiction filmmaking in regard to style, structure, tone, and subject matter. In addition to in-class screenings and reading assignments, students will receive individual screening and reading lists tailored to their projects.