Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof

Biography:

Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof is a Toronto-based experimental filmmaker, scholar and Associate Professor at the School of Image Arts, Ryerson University. She is a graduate of Media Arts at Ryerson University (BAA) and Communication and Culture at York University (MA) and (PhD). Her doctoral research concentrated on feminine aesthetics in avant-garde cinema and body art, and drew on Julia Kristeva’s theories on vanguard poetry and Luce Irigaray’s philosophy of ethics. Izabella’s writings on cinema, art, dance, technology and culture, have appeared in Parol, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, and in Ultimate Reality and Meaning Journal (Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Philosophy of Understanding), and in anthologies on media arts and on screen dance, including a chapter in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Screendance. Izabella’s film and video projects have screened in numerous group programs at international film festivals, cinematheques, galleries and art centres in Canada and abroad. Solo screenings of her works have been presented at the Diagonal Film Archive in Seoul, South Korea (2008), at the 10th Festival des Cinéma Différent de Paris in France (2008), and at Canadian Film Institute: CAFÉ eX in Ottawa (2007). Izabella’s projects received many awards from film festivals, as well as grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, NFB, LIFT, and Ryerson University. Her films are included in collections at several universities and in video anthologies, including: Made by Hand, Contre L’Oeil, and Loop Collective. She is the co-founder and an active member of the successful Toronto-based experimental film collective, the Loop Collective (loopcollective.com). Her work as an artist and scholar is interdisciplinary and often explores connections between art, bodies, and technology.