Laura Poitras is a filmmaker, journalist, and artist. CITIZENFOUR, which was the third installment of her post-9/11 Trilogy, won a 2015 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. She began pre-production of that film at MacDowell during her first residency. Part one of the trilogy, My Country, My Country, about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, was nominated for an Academy Award. Part two, The Oath, 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, is a series of immersive installations and new work, including: ANARCHIST; O'Say Can You See; Bed Down Location; Disposition Matrix; November 20, 2004; and Last Seen.
Her film RISK, on which she worked at MacDowell, premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. Her collaboration with Henrik Moltke, Project X, screened at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Her 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.
Laura Poitras
Fellow Works Supported by MacDowell
RISK (Film)
Studios
Sorosis
Laura Poitras worked in the Sorosis studio.
Sorosis Studio was funded by the New York Carol Club of Sorosis. The small, masonry studio was designed by F. Winsor, Jr., the architect who also designed Savidge Library (1926) and Mixter Studio (1927). At the time of construction, the large porch on the southeast façade offered a spectacular mountain view that has since been obscured…