Professor of Photography + Film Professor of Photography + Film
Sasha Waters is a moving image artist who has produced and directed 18 documentary and experimental films, 14 of which originate in 16mm. Embracing a personal, artisanal approach to craft, she served as cinematographer and sound editor on ten of her films and as editor on all but one.
Sasha’s most recent feature documentary Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable, was called one of the year’s best by The New Yorker and won a Special Jury Prize for “Best Feminist Reconsideration of a Male Artist” in the Documentary Competition at the SXSW Film Festival. Following its theatrical run, Winogrand aired on the PBS series American Masters. Sasha’s past documentary, experimental and essay films have screened at the Telluride Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Kassel Dokfest, IMAGES in Toronto, Microscope Gallery, the Tribeca, Ann Arbor, Woodstock, Chicago Underground and Big Sky Documentary Film Festivals among other international venues.
Sasha is a three-time recipient of Media Arts grants from the National Endowment of the Arts; her films have been supported by Field of Vision, the Catapult Film Fund; the Virginia Museum of Art Fine Arts Fellowship and MacDowell, among others. She is the 2016 recipient of the Helen Hill Award from the Orphan Film Symposium. This award honors the legacy of artist, educator and activist Helen Hill and is biennially presented to a filmmaker whose work “celebrates and embodies such things as creativity, self-expression, animation, small-gauge film, homemade movies and all things made by hand, collaboration, generosity, liberal spirituality, activism, love, play, community, and connection.”
Sasha is included in Edited By: Women Film Editors, a survey of women who “invented, developed, fine-tuned and revolutionized the art of film editing,” and in the FemEx Film Archive, an ongoing collective archive of interviews with feminist experimental filmmakers.