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Jesse McLean Headshot

Jesse McLean

  • Associate Professor, Film, Video, Animation and New Genres
  • Chair, Department of Film, Video, Animation and New Genres

Education

  • MFA, Moving Image, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2009
  • BA, Studio Arts, Oberlin College, 1997

Biography

I am drawn to hybrid forms that blur the boundaries between documentary, narrative, and experimental traditions. My films often begin with ordinary habits, gestures, and spaces, then open outward to questions of culture, memory, and desire. For me, film is less about providing answers than about creating spaces for empathy and reflection. My practice explores what it means to be human in relation to what is not, revealing intimate connections between people, materials, and the more-than-human world, and the tension between finite material limits and infinite human desire.

My films and installations have been presented at museums, galleries, and film festivals worldwide, including CPH:DOX (main documentary competition), New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Venice Film Festival, Kassel Dokfest, Impakt Festival, First Look Festival, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, EXiS (Seoul), Mumok (Vienna), and Green Gallery (Milwaukee). My work has received numerous awards, including the International Critics’ Prize (FIPRESCI) at Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, a Jury Prize at Videoex (Switzerland), as well as awards for excellence in editing and sound design—areas that are central to both my filmmaking and my teaching. I am especially drawn to editing and sound as spaces where structure, rhythm, and texture shape emotional and intellectual meaning.

I have been a featured artist at the Flaherty Seminar, a MacDowell Fellow, a fellow at the Center for 21st Century Studies, and a recipient of a Mary L. Nohl Individual Artist Fellowship for Established Arts. Most of my films are distributed by the Video Data Bank.

My teaching and research interests include nonfiction and narrative hybridity, adaptation, appropriation and collage, editing, sound design, and the intersections of art and popular culture. I teach courses in editing and post-production, appropriated media, and senior capstone projects, and I work closely with graduate students.

I currently serve as Chair of the Department of Film, Video, Animation & New Genres, where I oversee faculty and staff and act as a liaison between the department and the university. I also serve as Chair of the Peck School of the Arts Curriculum Committee and on the Physical Environment Committee and the Academic Programs and Curriculum Committee.

Links

Recent & Selected Works

Two hands up in front of a window
Hands
A person facing away from the camera, sitting at a piano
Piano
A person in a winter coat with their hood up sitting against snow covered rocks
Shoreline
Close-up of a spiky plant stem with large green leaves glowing with red and pink light along the edges.
Grow Light
Many leafy green plants obscuring a person inside of a house, a bookshelf in the background
Deborah’s house
Close-up of hands tending to a bonsai plant with tweezers
Jack’s bonsai
Light Needs trailer
Climbing

Artistic Works & Performances

  • Placeholder, 12 min, 2025
  • Light Needs, 74 min, Syndicado Film Sales, 2023
  • Relations, video loop, 2020
  • Curious Fantasies, 8 min, Video Data Bank, 2019
  • Catalog, 45 min, 2018
  • Scroll, 6 min, 2018
  • Wherever You Go, There We Are, 12 min, Video Data Bank, 2017
  • See a Dog, Hear a Dog, 18 min, Video Data Bank, 2016
  • I’m in Pittsburgh and It’s Raining, 14 min, Video Data Bank, 2015
  • Just Like Us, 15 min, Video Data Bank, 2013
  • The Invisible World, 20 min, Video Data Bank, 2012
  • Remote, 11 min, Video Data Bank, 2011
  • Magic for Beginners, 21 min, Video Data Bank, 2010
  • Somewhere Only We Know, 5 min, Video Data Bank, 2009
  • Climbing, video loop, 2009
  • The Eternal Quarter Inch, 9 min, Video Data Bank, 2008

Awards

  • Selected for Main Competition, CPH:DOX Film Festival — World Premiere of Light Needs, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2023
  • Jury Award, Onion City Experimental Film + Video Festival (Curious Fantasies), 2020
  • Jury Award, Chicago Underground Film Festival (See a Dog, Hear a Dog), 2017
  • Best Documentary (Audience Award), Nonplussed Fest (I’m in Pittsburgh and It’s Raining), 2016
  • Best Editing — Janela Internacional de Cinema do Recife (I’m in Pittsburgh and It’s Raining), 2015
  • First Prize — Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival (I’m in Pittsburgh and It’s Raining), 2015
  • International Critics’ Prize (FIPRESCI), Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (Just Like Us), 2014
  • Jury Prize (First Prize), International Competition, Videoex (The Invisible World), 2013
  • Ghostly Award for Best Sound Design, Ann Arbor Film Festival (Remote), 2012
  • Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award for Emerging Experimental Video Artist — Ann Arbor Film Festival (The Burning Blue), 2009

Grants/Funded Research

  • UWM Research Assistance Fund, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2025
  • Science New Wave Development Grant, 2024
  • Brico Forward Fund Award — Milwaukee Film, Milwaukee, WI, 2023
  • Rooftop Filmmakers Fund Grantee (Light Needs), New York, NY, 2021
  • Center for 21st Century Studies Fellow, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, 2017
  • Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowship for Individual Artists (Established Artist), Milwaukee, WI, 2016
  • MacDowell Colony Fellowship (Alpert/MacDowell Fellow), Peterborough, NH, 2016