Daniel Eisenberg’s films and videos challenge the conventions of non-fiction film representation and production. Over the last three decades, he has forged a unique body of films that have become internationally recognized for expanding the boundaries between traditions of the personal avant-garde film and historical documentary.
Daniel Eisenberg has been making films and videos since 1976. His films have been screened throughout Europe, Asia, and North America with solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Musée du Cinema, Brussels; De Unie, Rotterdam; and Kino Arsenal, Berlin. His films have been shown in the Berlin Film Festival; the Sydney Film Festival; the London Film Festival; the Jerusalem Film Festival; Vue Sur Les Docs, Marseilles, and the Whitney Biennial, New York. His work has also been featured in many conferences and symposia, including the first International Walter Benjamin Conference, Portbou-Barcelona, Spain. Eisenberg's films have won numerous awards, fellowships, and honors. Among these are a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship; the D.A.A.D. Berliner Künstlerprogramm Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Awards include arc+film Festival, Graz, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, New England Film Festival. His films are included in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Arsenal-Experimentale, Berlin, the Nederlands Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, the Haus des Dokumentarfilm, Stuttgart, and numerous university, art, and film school collections. He has also researched and edited documentaries for National Public Television, including Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, and Vietnam: A Television History. Eisenberg lives and works in Chicago and is a Professor in the departments of Film/Video/New Media/Animation, and Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Eisenberg is the recipient of a Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin for 2014–2015.
Films and Installations
“The Unstable Object II” - 2022, 203 minutes, color, sound, HD (or modular for installation)
”The Unstable Object” - 2011, 69 minutes, color, sound, HD, (or modular for installation)
“The Incompletist” - in progress, 120 minutes, color, sound, mixed media
“Far From Here” - 2007, 2-minute loop, video, mixed media installation
“Something More Than Night” - 2003, 77 minutes, color, sound, 16MM
“Persistence” - 1997, 84 minutes, color, sound, 16MM
“Cooperation Of Parts” - 1987, 41 minutes, color, sound, 16MM
“Film Studies” - 1979 - 1990, 20 minutes, black and white, silent, 16MM
“To A Brother In Asia” - 1983, 32 minutes, color sound, 16MM
“Native Shore” - 1983, 10 minutes, color, sound, 16MM
“Displaced Person” - 1981, 12 minutes, black and white, sound, 16MM
“Design and Debris” - 1979, 11 minutes, color, silent, 16MM
“Matrice” - 1975, 8 minutes, black and white, silent, 16MM
Selected Grants and Awards
Fellow, re:work, Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History, Humboldt Univerität zu Berlin, 2020–2021
Graham Foundation Grant, 2020–2023
Faculty Research Fellowship, Institute for Curatorial Research and Practice, SAIC. 2017–2020
Research Fellowship, Guest of the Director, re:work, Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History, Humboldt Univerität zu Berlin, 2016–2017
Berlin Prize, American Academy, Berlin, 2014–2015
Illinois Arts Council Media Arts Fellowship, 2014–2015
Creative Capital Grant in Film/Video, 2012
Prix Georges De Beauregard International, FIDMarseille, 2011
Andrew Mellon Foundation/SAIC Presidential Grant, 2011
Grainger Foundation Fellowship, 2007–2008
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1999–2000
Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fellow in Film, 1991
Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (D.A.A.D.), Berlin Artist-in-Residence, 1991
The MacDowell Colony Artist Fellow, 1990
National Endowment for the Arts, Media Arts Grant, 1989–92
Grand Prize, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, 1988–89
Massachusetts Council on the Arts Grant, 1986–1988
Selected Collections
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
re:work, Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History, Humboldt Univerität zu Berlin, 2016
American Academy in Berlin, 2015
Memorial de la Shoah, Paris, 2014
Duke University, 2012
Stanford University, 2012
University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey, England, Emory University, 2012
University of Pennsylvania, 2012
Temple University, 2012
Miami University, Ohio, 2012
Syracuse University, 2012
Concordia University, Montreal, 2012
University of California, Santa Cruz, 2012
California Institute of the Arts, 2012
Carleton College, 2012
Georgetown University, 2011
University of Central Florida, 2010
University of Rochester, 2008
Hampshire College, 2008
Northwestern University, 2007
California College of the Arts, 2007
Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig
Oberlin College
DePaul University
Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek
Northwestern University
Video Data Bank
Haus der Dokumentarfilms, Stuttgart
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Musee National d'Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Netherlands Filmmuseum, Amsterdam
American Federation of Arts/MOMA NY
SCREENINGS AND EXHIBITIONS INCLUDE
Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Luma Arles
Post-Image Cluster (MILIEUX), The Global Emergent Media, Concordia University, Montreal
Artists Television Access, San Francisco, CA
Princeton University School of Architecture, Princeton, NJ
Kuunstlerhaus Stuttgart
The Museum of Art and Design, New York
Rebuild Foundation, Chicago
Istanbul Design Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey
Lichtblick Kino, Berlin
Galerie Hubert Winter, Wien, Austria
Deutsche Hygiene Museum, Dresden
American Academy in Berlin
Filmmuseum Potsdam, Germany
re:work - Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History, Humboldt University, Berlin
Kunstverein Hamburg
Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, Texas
Kino Arsenal, Berlin
Retrospective, WORK Gallery, London
Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, IL
REDCAT Theater, Los Angeles, CA
Le Bal / Cinema Des Cinèastes, Topographie De La Guerre, Paris
Cinemateca Portuguesa - Museu do Cinema
Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt, Germany
Metropolis, Hamburg, Germany
Bunkier Stuki, Krakow, Poland
Musee National d'Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Filmmuseum, Munich
Filmmuseum, Frankfurt
't Hoogt, Utrecht
De Unie, Rotterdam
Musée du Cinema, Brussels
MOMA/PS1, NY
Fundaçao Joaquim Nabuco/ B3, Recife, Brazil
Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival
First Dublin Biennial, 2012, Dublin
European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück
Scratch Cinema, Lightcone, Paris
New York Film Festival, Views from the Avant-Garde
Festival International Documentaire Marseille (FIDMarseille)
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Centre Georges Pompidou, Metz
Dortmunder Zentrum für Kunst und Kreativitat/ Museum Ostwall
Argos Center for Art and Media, Brussels
Los Angeles Film Forum
Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Vienna
Berlin International Film Festival
Jerusalem Film Festival, Jerusalem
Le Premiere Edition Paris Cinema
6. International Biennale für Medien und Architektur, Graz
Kunstverein München, “Dokumentation und Fiktion”
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain,
International Walter Benjamin Conference, Barcelona/Portbou, Spain
Whitney Museum of American Art, “American Century,” New York
Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Bangkok, Thailand
L.A. County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
Vue Sur Les Docs Festival, Marseilles
Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt
Sydney International Film Festival
film + arc Graz, Festival, Austria
Bangkok International Film Festival
Viper, Lucerne, Switzerland
Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris
London International Film Festival
“A Passage Illuminated - De Amerikaanse Avant-Garde Film 1980-1990”Stichting
Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, “1989 Biennial Exhibition”
Mannheim International Film Festival, Mannheim, Germany
Recent Reviews and Publications
Gustafsson, Henrik, Crime and Scenery in Postwar Film and Photography, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, 2019
Gustafsson, Henrik, “The past still has possibilities”: The Art of Memory in Daniel Eisenberg’s Postwar Films, in Exploring Text, Media, and Memory, Lars Sætre, Patrizia Lombardo, and Sara Tanderup Linkis eds., Aarhus University Press, Denmark, 2017
Norden, Linda, “Time and Time Again,” Artforum, 2016 http://artforum.com/film/id=60148
Billyou, Mary, The Unstable Object at the Museum of Arts and Design, March 31, 2016, Screenslate
MacDonald, Scott, Binghamton Babylon: Voices from the Cinema Department, SUNY Press, 2015
Solomon-Godeau, Abigail, Sleepless Nights, Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna, 2014
Beauvais, Yann, “Daniel Eisenberg: du fragment et de la persistance,” Gruppen, No. 8, Hiver 2014, Mont de Marsan, France, pp. 26–41
Peterson, Jennifer, “Workers Leaving the Factory: Witnessing Labor in the Digital Age,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media, edited by Amy Herzog, Carol Vernallis, John Richardson (London: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2013)
Guerin, Frances, “Archives and Images as Repositories of Time, Language, and Forms From the Past: A Conversation with Daniel Eisenberg,” The Moving Image, The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 2012, University of Minnesota Press,, Minneapolis, MN pp. 112-118
Genevieve Yue, Unstable Images, New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde, 2011 http://reverseshot.com/article/views_avantgarde_2011
Un Travail Qui Tourne Rond,” Journal Le Marseillaise, C.C., July 11, 2011
Skoller, Jeffrey, editor, "POSTWAR: The Films of Daniel Eisenberg, "with contributions by Nora Alter, Leora Auslander, Raymond Bellour, Christa Blümlinger, Scott Durham, Daniel Eisenberg, Tom Gunning, and Jeffrey Skoller, Black Dog Publishing, London, 192pp., 2010