Elisabeth Subrin is a filmmaker, artist and writer, producing narrative and experimental films and film/video installations. She teaches courses in screenwriting, directing, moving image art, and women's film and video art history. Subrin is a Guggenheim, Sundance, Rockefeller and Annenberg Fellow, and a 2020 Fulbright Research Scholar at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy in France. Prior to teaching at Temple, she taught at Harvard University, Amherst College, Cooper Union, Bennington College and the Yale University School of Art MFA Program and was Distinguished Visiting Graduate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received an MFA in video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA in filmmaking from Massachusetts College of Art, where she received the 2018 Distinguished Alumni Award.
Professor Subrin's critically acclaimed work has been exhibited extensively in museums, galleries and film festivals throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Biennial, The Guggenheim Museum, The Vienna Viennale, The Walker Art Museum, The Cannes International Film Festival, The New York Film Festival and international film festivals globally. Her short film Maria Schneider, 1983 was awarded a 2023 César, France's highest film honor. Her films (1997-2022) were the subject of a 2024 retrospective at the Champs Elysees Film Festival in Paris. Her feature narrative, A Woman, A Part, starring Maggie Siff, was theatrically released in 2017 and presented on Netflix, Showtime, Metrograph, and The Criterion Channel. In 2012 and 2022, her film Shulie was included in the British Film Institute’s Sight&Sound once-a-decade international critics’ poll for “The Greatest Films of All Times,” and in 2024, The New Yorker selected it as one of the "Greatest Bio-Pics of All Times." Subrin has presented her video installations and photography in solo exhibitions including at Participant, Inc, New York, The Bell Gallery at Brown University, Providence, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, VOLTA, Film Society of Lincoln Center, The Jewish Museum, New York, and in a mid-career retrospective at Sue Scott Gallery in New York, as well as many group exhibitions. Commissioned by The Bell Gallery at Brown University, her multi-channel video, sound and sculptural installation The Listening Takes will be presented in a new version at STUK Center for Dance, Image and Sound in Belgium in 2026. Subrin is currently working on a biographical feature film and book project about the late French actress Maria Schneider (1952 - 2011).
Recent Work:
2026. Solo exhibition: The Listening Takes, STUK Center for Performance, Image and Sound, Leuven, Brussels, Opening March 26th.
2026. Presentations of selected films, Geneva Art Week, Centre d'Art La Meute, Lausanne, Switzerland (January)
2025. Screenings of new films and Lecture, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, October 23rd - 25th
2024-2025. Solo exhibition: The Listening Takes/Manal Issa, 2024, Participant, Inc., New York, NY, November 16th - February 2
2023. Awarded a César (French Academy Award) for Best Documentary Short for Maria Schneider, 1983.
2023. Solo exhibition: The Listening Takes, The Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI, February 9th - June 4th.
2022. Premiere of Maria Schneider, 1983, The 75th Cannes International Film Festival, Cannes, France.
2020. Fulbright Research Scholar, École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy, France.
2018. Distinguished Alumni Award, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA.
2017. Theatrical release of A Woman, A Part, starring Maggie Siff, Cara Seymour, John Ortiz and Khandi Alexander.