A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Birthplace:
Dublin, Ireland
Maureen Selwood is a filmmaker artist who works with visual art, digital media, installation, and performance. A pioneer in the field of independent experimental animation, Selwood has both charted new territory for women artists, and reframed conventional notions of women as objects of desire in art history. Rooted aesthetically in film noir, dada and surrealism her work explores carnivals, festivals, and religious rites as celebrations and showcases for the imaginary. After graduating with her MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Selwood found herself at the center of a burgeoning new scene in independent animation, which aligned itself more with the art world than with the traditional animation establishments of the time. Selwood produced such ground breaking films as: Odalisque, The Rug, This Is Just To Say and Pearls. Critics celebrated Selwood's ingenuity and artistic elegance. After NY Selwood moved to Los Angeles where Jules Engel invited her to teach at California Institute of the Arts in the Experimental Animation Program. Shaped by influences she experienced there, she produced: Flying Circus: An Imagined Memoir; Hail Mary; Mistaken Identity; Drawing Lessons; and A Modern Convenience. Selwood was a recipient of the prestigious Rome Prize and while in Rome she created the installation, As The Veil Lift. Resistance and the book, Green Is for Privacy. As You Desire Me (2009) is an installation created in response to the Iraq War. In 2010, Selwood created digital animations for Rain Coloring Forest by Sardono and Jennifer Tipton at REDCAT. In 2014, Selwood created animation for The Metropolitan Opera's production of the opera Werther, by Jules Massenet. In 2015, Selwood’s film for the composer David Rosenboom, How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims, delete (Section VII, Impression), was screened at the Whitney Museum. In 2015, Selwood opened her exhibition at the Rosamund Felsen Gallery in Los Angeles. Titled Sounding the Note of A, it featured drawings and transfer prints, as well as large sculptural pieces inspired by the balaclavas of Pussy Riot. Also in 2015, Selwood created 29 Cross Examinations. With live performance, film, and transcripts from the actual trial of Joan of Arc, Selwood animates Joan’s interior life and cracks open a new perspective on this much mythologized folk hero. Portrait of Maureen SelwoodStill courtesy of the Academy’s Oral History Projects Department. Copyright © Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Selwood is the recipient of awards from: John Solomon Guggenheim Foundation; Center for Cultural Innovation (Los Angeles); C.O.L.A. Individual Artists Fellowship (LA); New York State Council on the Arts; The Jerome Foundation; The American Film Institute. She is the first artist to receive the Rome Prize in Visual Arts from the American Academy in Rome in the area of animation. The Academy of Motion Pictures has selected the films of Maureen Selwood for preservation under the supervision of curator and preservationist, Mark Toscano.
Animation:
2009 As You Desire Me
2010 How Much Better If Plymouth Rock Had Landed On The Pilgrims
Director:
1980 Odalisque
1985 The Rug
1988 Pearls
1989 Animated Self-Portraits
1995 Flying Circus: An Imagined Memoir
1998 Hail Mary
2001 Mistaken Identity
2005 Drawing Lessons
2009 As You Desire Me
2010 How Much Better If Plymouth Rock Had Landed On The Pilgrims
2012 A Modern Convenience
2017 All Creatures Great and Small
2022 Blue Poodle Chair
Thanks:
1980 Odalisque
1985 The Rug
1988 Pearls
1989 Animated Self-Portraits
1995 Flying Circus: An Imagined Memoir
1998 Hail Mary
1999 Al Tudi Tuhak
1999 Between the Lines
2001 Mistaken Identity
2005 Drawing Lessons
2009 As You Desire Me
2010 How Much Better If Plymouth Rock Had Landed On The Pilgrims
2012 A Modern Convenience
2014 Food
2017 All Creatures Great and Small
2019 The Coin
2022 Blue Poodle Chair
Writer:
1980 Odalisque
1985 The Rug
1988 Pearls
1989 Animated Self-Portraits
1995 Flying Circus: An Imagined Memoir
1998 Hail Mary
1999 Al Tudi Tuhak
1999 Between the Lines
2001 Mistaken Identity
2005 Drawing Lessons
2009 As You Desire Me
2010 How Much Better If Plymouth Rock Had Landed On The Pilgrims
2012 A Modern Convenience
2014 Food
2017 All Creatures Great and Small
2019 The Coin
2022 Blue Poodle Chair
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Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.