Diane Kitchen retired from UWM in 2011 after teaching in the Peck School of the Arts Film Department for 27 years. She taught film production, editing and sound with an emphasis on experimental approaches, cross-cultural aesthetics, and forms of perception illumined through the moving image. Kitchen also managed UWM’s Cinema Arts Archive from 1995 to 2011.

Her work in film bridges documentary, personal expression and cultural commentary. Two experimental documentaries, Before We Knew Nothingand Roots, Thorns, were filmed with the Asháninka people in the Amazon Basin of eastern Peru. A series of films centering on observations of the natural world include Wot the Ancient Sod, Notch, Quick’s Thicket, Ecstatic Vessels, and Videe. The Penfield Road and Horse Song address the American cultural landscape. Screening venues include the Museum of the American Indian, Museum of Modern Art, The Library of Congress, Montreal’s First Peoples’ Festival, Vancouver’s Aboriginal Film & Video Festival, Denmark’s Indigenous Encounter of the Americas, the Whitney Biennial, London Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque, the Pacific Film Archive and Walker Art Center.

Diane Kitchen received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.