- mcleanj@uwm.edu
- 414-251-6302
- Mitchell Hall B83B
- She / Her
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
BA, Studio Arts, Oberlin College
Biography
Jesse McLean has dedicated her creative research and art practice to exploring what it is to be human in relation to what is not. Her films reveal the deep intimacies and connections formed through these relationships and contrast the finite capacities of the nonhuman with infinite human desires.
She has presented her work at museums, galleries, and film festivals worldwide, including the CPH:DOX in Copenhagen; New York Film Festival, NY, NY; International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands; Venice Film Festival, Italy; Kassel Dokfest, Germany; Impakt Festival, Netherlands; First Look Festival, NY, NY; Imagine Science Film Festival, NY, NY; Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Switzerland; Yebizo Festival of Art + Alternative Visions, Tokyo, Japan; EXiS, Seoul, S. Korea; Mumok in Vienna, Austria; and Green Gallery, Milwaukee. She was the recipient of an International Critics Prize, (FIPRESCI Prize) at the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and a Jury Prize in the International Competition at the 2013 Videoex Festival in Switzerland. She was a featured artist at the 2014 Flaherty Seminar and a MacDowell Fellow in 2016. In 2016 she was selected for a Mary L. Nohl Individual Artist Fellowship and was a fellow at the Center for 21st Century Studies.
Her teaching and research interests include nonfiction and narrative hybridity, adaptation, appropriation and collage, sound design, and the intersection between art and popular culture. She teaches courses in editing and post-production, appropriated media, and senior project capstone courses.
Accolades
- Science New Wave Fund Awardee, Imagine Science, New York, NY (Everything Must Go) (2024)
- "Light Needs" selected for main competition at CPH:DOX Film Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark (2023)
- Brico Forward Fund Award from Milwaukee Film, Milwaukee, WI (Everything Must Go) (2023)
- Rooftop Filmmakers Fund Grantee, New York, NY (Light Needs) (2021)
- Center for 21st Century Studies Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI (2017)
- Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowship for Individual Artists (Established Artist), Milwaukee, WI (2016)
- MacDowell Colony Fellowship, (Alpert/MacDowell Fellow), Peterborough, NH (2016)
Recent Work
