Jake Yuzna

Jake Yuzna is an American film director, screenwriter, and curator. Their debut feature Open was the first American film to win the Teddy Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival and in 2005 Yuzna become the youngest recipient of funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Although known mainly for their work in film, Yuzna has curated several retrospectives, exhibitions and special projects. In 2010, they founded the first cinema program at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. Between 2011 - 2013 they organized the first fellowship, publication and conference to argue nightlife as a form of contemporary art. In addition, Yuzna has authored books on contemporary art, design, and culture as well as contributed to Artforum.

They have also curated the first American retrospectives of artists and filmmakers including Alejandro Jodorowsky, Sion Sono, Gregg Araki, Francois Sagat, and Quentin Crisp. In addition, Yuzna curated the first museum surveys of Metamodernsim, the New French Extremity, and the medium of VHS.

Yuzna is the son of poet Susan Yuzna and nephew to horror film director and producer Brian Yuzna.

Filmography

Year Film 2004 Between the Boys (short) 2005 Better Left Alone (short) 2010 Open2017 The Knife - Live At Terminal 5 2021 The Alternative Is Hard To See (short)2021 After America

Awards and honors 2005: "Special Jury Award for Artistic Risktaking" from IFP 2010: "Teddy Jury Prize" for Open (60th Berlin Film Festival) 2010: "Best Narrative Feature" for Open (TLV Festival) 2010: "Best Performance" for Morty Diamond in Open (New Fest) 2012: Creative Capital Award in Filmmaking 2018: "Richard P. Rogers Spirit of Excellence Award" from the America Film Institute 2019: "McKnight Fellowship in Media Artists" from McKnight Foundation and FilmNorth 2020: "The Blood List" from British Horror Film Festival 2021: "Guggenheim Fellowship" from John Simon Guggenheim Foundation

Publications Year Project 2013 THE FUN: The Social Practice of Nightlife in NYC 2014 NYC Makers 2022 No Joke: Humor as Resistance 2022 No Approval Required: Twin Cities Alternative Art Spaces 2023 Content and Its Discontents 2023 Solidarity in Unraveling Worlds 2023 Nightlife as Form 2024 Sound of Spaces

Curation

Year Project 2010 Zombo Italiano: The 1970s Italian Zombie Movement 2010 Blood into Gold: The Cinematic Alchemy of Alejandro Jodorowsky 2011 An Assault of Reality 2011 David Bowie, Artist 2011 François Sagat: The New Leading Man 2011 The Home Front: American Design Now 2011 Isaach De Bankolé, an Unexpected Gentlema 2011 No More Modern : Notes on Metamodernism 2011 Sion Sono: The New Poet 2011 The User: The New Auteur 2011 - 2013 THE FUN Fellowship in the Social Practice of Nightlife 2012 Adults in the Dark: Avant-Garde Animation 2012 Anna Molska, Human Material 2012 Argento: Il Cinema Nel Sangue 2012 Julika Rudelius 2012 Susan Hefuna: Vantages 2012 No Wave Cinema 2012 VHS 2013 ;) 2013 After the Museum 2013 ESP TV 2013 God Help Me: Gregg Araki 2013 It Is Crispin Hellion Glover 2013 J’Adore Violence: Cinema of the New French Extremity 2013 Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Quentin Crisp 2013 Takeshi Murata : Mortality 2013 Without Compromise: The Cinema of William Klein 2014 NYC Makers: The 2014 MAD Biennial 2014 Life with Technology: The Cinema of Godfrey Reggio 2015 It's Hard to be Human: The Cinema of Roy Andersson 2015 The Director Must Not Be Credited: 20 Years of Dogme 95 2015 The Unseen Cinema of HR Giger 2015 Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time 2015 Remember Film? 2018 Plastic Futures and Premillennial Tensions: 1990s Science Fiction Cinema before a New Millennium 2023 Eve Fowler: A Universal Shudder (co-curated with BF Hall) 2023 Make Sense of This: Visitors Respond to the Walker’s Collection (co-curator) 2024 Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon (co-curator) 2024 Nightlife as Form