Eliza McNitt
Eliza McNitt is a writer and director. She is a 2018 Emmy® Awards Finalist and the recipient of the VR Grand Prize at The Venice Film Festival. Her work has been described by the New York Times as “beautiful and surprising.” She explores the cosmic collision of science and art. From astronauts to astrophysicists, McNitt works alongside scientists to tell stories about the human connection to the cosmos. Her films and VR experiences have appeared at festivals including Sundance, SXSW, AFI Fest, Cannes NEXT, Tribeca, Telluride, and The Venice Film Festival. She’s a two time Intel Science Fair winner, OneFifty creator, Alfred P. Sloan grant recipient, and winner of a 2018 Gold Screen Young Director's Award at Cannes Lions. McNitt is the creator of SPHERES an immersive Virtual Reality journey through the songs of the Universe. Executive Produced by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel, SPHERES stars Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things), Jessica Chastain (Tree of Life, Interstellar), and Patti Smith as the voices of the cosmos. SPHERES made history as the first VR experience to debut at the Telluride Film Festival and was world's first ever acquisition of a VR experience out of the Sundance Film Festival. SPHERES received the Grand Prize in Virtual Reality at The Venice Film Festival. Eliza found filmmaking through science. A top winner of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for her research on Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder, Eliza's first film was inspired by a desire to communicate the devastating impact of vanishing honeybees. Her honeybee research received the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering’s Gerber Medal–the state’s highest award for student science research–as well as special awards from The Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory, MIT-Lincoln Lab, the Audubon Society, CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research), the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame, Pfizer, the United States Armed Forces, the United States Air Force, and Connecticut Governor Jody Rell. Her documentary Requiem for the Honeybee was broadcast internationally. Since then, Eliza has developed a passion for telling science as storytelling. At NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Eliza was the winner of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Production Grant for her film Without Fire which was filmed on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, starring Magdalena Begay (Drunktown’s Finest) and Misty Upham (Frozen River, August: Osage County). Eliza's short film Artemis Falls starring Adepero Oduye (Pariah, 12 Years A Slave) was commissioned by TED and follows an astronaut on her journey into space. Her unique voice as a director, fusing science with narrative storytelling has been supported by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, TED, Google, Intel, Samsung, VICE, and Time Warner OneFifty.