Leilah Weinraub

Leilah Weinraub (born 1979) is an American filmmaker, conceptual artist, and the former chief executive officer of the fashion brand Hood By Air. In 2018, she was named a Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Fellow.

Biography Weinraub was born in Los Angeles to an African-American textile designer mother from Compton and a Jewish pediatrician father from Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Weinraub attended one year at an agricultural high school in Israel before returning to the United States and legally emancipating herself from her parents.

Career In 1998, Weinraub met American History X director Tony Kaye while working at the Los Angeles Boutique Maxfield's. In exchange for Kaye paying her Antioch tuition, Weinraub assisted him on his project Lake of Fire. and has subsequently been screened at various art institutions and film festivals including the Tate, London; ICA, London; MoMA PS1, New York; Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; True/False Film Festival, Missouri; Sheffield Doc/Fest, England; Images Festival, Toronto; Frameline Film Festival, San Francisco and Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York. A shorter version was screened as part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial.

In March 2020, the film was released on the website Pornhub, the first non-pornographic film to be shown there.

Hood by Air

In 2012, Weinraub began working on the critically acclaimed fashion label Hood By Air, eventually taking on the title of chief executive officer. She held this position until the brand's hiatus in 2017. Weinraub was openly skeptical of the brand's celebrity endorsements and kept the company closed to outside investors.