- brbalcom@uwm.edu
- Kenilworth Square East 473
- He / Him
Ben Balcom
- Assistant Professor, Film, Video, Animation and New Genres
- Chair, Programming Committee
Education
MFA, Film, UW-Milwaukee
Biography
Ben Balcom is a filmmaker and educator based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His recent films take a lyrical approach to documenting the spaces and afterlives of now-defunct utopian projects. Previously, he created a series of introspective landscape films engaging with Milwaukee’s progressive political past and contemporary anxieties about the future. Earlier works used abstraction to explore the tensions between perception and communication, with a reflexive focus on the cinematic medium itself.
Balcom’s films have screened internationally at venues and festivals such as The Museum of the Moving Image, International Film Festival Rotterdam, European Media Arts Festival, IndieLisboa, Media City Film Festival, Alchemy Film, and Slamdance. His work has received awards from Onion City Film Festival, Athens International Film & Video Festival, and Ann Arbor Film Festival. Most recently, he was a fellow at the Center for 21st Century Studies at UW-Milwaukee.