Steve Wetzel Headshot

Steve Wetzel

  • Director of Academic Affairs, Peck School of the Arts
  • Associate Professor, Film, Video, Animation and New Genres
  • Director, Undergraduate Studies
  • Co-Chair, Curriculum Committee

Education

MFA, Film, UW-Milwaukee
MFA, Painting, University of Chicago
BFA, Painting, UW-Eau Claire

Biography

Steve Wetzel earned an MFA in painting from the University of Chicago (’98), and an MFA in film and video from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (’00).

Wetzel’s creative research interests include the intersection of experimental film/video, observational documentary, and the social construction of reality. His videos such as Music Club (2015), Of the Iron Range (2014), and Aquarius the Waterman (2018) have screened nationally and internationally, and his most recent work, My Brother (2023), is an Official Selection at Luleå International Film Festival in Sweden, the Indian Independent Film Festival in West Bengal, India, and the 4th Dimension Independent Film Festival in Indonesia.

With courses on documentary (Film 463, Experimental Documentary; Film 464, Observational Documentary), filmic composition and form (Film 397, Drawing for Filmmakers), and graduate research (Film 720, Non-Fiction Poetics), Wetzel seeks to integrate his research and pedagogy and is a firm believer in the classroom as a radical, creative space where both teacher and student are vulnerable to transformation.