Leila Sujir

Leila Sujir (born 1951) is a Canadian video artist. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from the University of Alberta in 1971. She co-directed her first film, "Spectra" in 1973. In 1974, she spent a summer in Halifax studying experimental filmmaking at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Sujir also undertook graduate studies in post-colonial and post-modern theory at the University of Calgary with visiting theorists and poets Robert Kroetsch and Eli Mandel (1985), and literary theory at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver in 1981. From 2005 to 2006, Sujir worked at the University of Calgary as Distinguished Visiting Scholar working in the Interactions Lab at the Computing Science Department where she developed a digital 3D interactive media work.

Work Sujir is known for her video works examining cultural origin and difference. The Dreams of the Night Cleaners (1995) examines the lives of three night-shift employees at a Canadian airport. She co-produced the docu-fiction with the assistance of the National Film Board of Canada and The Banff Centre for the Arts, and won the Jury prize from the Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association Awards in 1995.

Collections Suijir's video works are held by several museum collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, and in Montbéliard, France, Centre international de création vidéo.