An Introduction to Filmmaker Angeline Gragasin
Angeline Gragasin's filmmaking feels part dream, part empowering, and part folklore. Whether watching her short film, 'The Animals', or her series on 'Women of the Future', she has a wonderful and personal style that affects everything from the editing, the set and wardrobe design, and the camera movement. It creates a world that seems both documentary and fantasy in approach, if only thanks to way Angeline sees the world around her.
“My background is interdisciplinary. I thrive on challenging research and editorial projects. My work is equal parts poetic expression and critical inquiry. I see each film as an opportunity to ask questions, take risks, and experiment.”
Gragasin was recently awarded a 2015-16 Kate Spade & Co. Foundation Fellowship at NEW INC, the New Museum’s incubator for artists and creative entrepreneurs. She was a participating artist in the 2016 Creative Capital Summer Intensive at BAM, as well as a sponsored guest speaker at Harvard University’s 2016 Just Food? Forum for Land Use, Rights, and Ecology. She is the recipient of production grants from The Bureau of Creative Works, Residency Unlimited, and a 2015 Screenwriting Residency in Manila at The Office of Culture & Design under mentorship from Clara Lobregat Balaguer.
Gragasin is currently in development with Colonía Cubao, a sci-fi feature that dramatizes colony collapse disorder from a human perspective by reimagining bees as as people in a future dystopian megacity. For this feature, Gragasin is working to develop new cinematographic techniques that allow principal photography to be shot on drones. She is working with biologist Thomas Seeley at Cornell University to research honeybee swarm intelligence and behavioral psychology for the film.
"If there's anything I've learned from the work of my favorite filmmakers", Angeline said, in an interview with Imperial Matters, "it's that pandering to the establishment is antithetical to the creative process. We must find the courage to create without the money, the recognition, the approval of some outside force."
Given the nature and breadth of Angeline's work, we are sure that whatever she makes for The BUREAU will be inspired and impressive, we can't wait.
