(2016), yet her expansive practice includes installations and short-form films.
In all of her work, Poitras bridges many artistic concerns: the documenting of pivotal actions with analytical precision, weaving together multiple threads that work on different levels, and formally challenging viewers with unexpected uses of sound and image.
Poitras' recent films deal with one of our society's most explosive issues, the systematic and covert ways that individual freedom is being undermined and threatened. Poitras faces deeply disturbing subjects with unwavering honesty, creating portraits of people and situations with an artistic complexity and sense of humanity that transcends conventional political documentaries. While dedicated to the potential of documentary film as a tool for artistic expression and the raising of consciousness, Laura Poitras never repeats herself, approaching each project as a unique personal and formal challenge.
Citizenfour (2014) is an extraordinary documentary, a moment by moment account of Edward Snowden's public release of government documents that led to international revelations about the extent of hidden surveillance in contemporary life.
"...Poitras compels us to rethink how an artist can explore and convey the nature of power, expand our understanding of the larger world, and shape our sense of responsibility."
- Jay Sanders, Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art
Artist Bio
Laura Poitras is a filmmaker, journalist, and artist. Citizenfour (2014), the third installment of her post-9/11 Trilogy, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary, along with awards from the British Film Academy, Independent Spirit Awards, Director's Guild of America, German Filmpreis, Cinema Eye Honors, Gotham Awards and others. Part one of the trilogy, My Country, My Country (2006), about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, was nominated for an Academy Award. Part two, The Oath (2010), focused on Guantanamo and the war on terror, and was nominated for two Emmy awards.
Astro Noise (2016), her first solo museum exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art curated by Jay Sanders, was a series of immersive installations. Poitras' film Risk premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and was released in 2017, and Project X (with Henrik Moltke), screened at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
Poitras' reporting on NSA mass surveillance (based on Edward Snowden's disclosures) won the George Polk Award for national security journalism, and shared in the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
In 2006, the U.S. government placed her on a secret watchlist and, through 2012, she was detained and interrogated at the U.S. border each time she traveled internationally. In 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. government to obtain her FBI and other government files. Over 1,000 pages have been released.
She has received many honors for her work, including a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital grant, and a Peabody Award. She has attended the Sundance Institute Documentary Labs as both a Fellow and Creative Advisor. She is on the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and is Co-Creator of the visual journalism project Field of Vision.
Laura Poitras' web site is: www.praxisfilms.org.