Marie Losier

Artist, Filmmaker

May 2023

Marie Losier Portrait
  • Cinema
  • Cities
  • San Francisco
  • New York
“The greatest encounters of my life have inspired my biopics of atypical artists. The result is always constructed through an experience of shared work with the person in question.”
Who?
-

I am an artist and a filmmaker. I was born in France and I spent twenty-three years of my life in New York City, where I took my first steps in art. I started out in theatre, building sets for Richard Foreman before diving into underground cinema upon meeting the Kuchar Brothers. They taught me how to use my camera of choice, the 16-mm Bolex, and how to create the asynchronous, poetic soundtracks of my films. I have been making films ever since.

 

My films are portraits of extraordinary artists and free spirits from the underground world. Encounters, feelings of love, the creative process, a mix of artifice and documentary, myriad mediums, cross-dressing, and costuming are the things that best define my approach to a certain genre of cinema – independent, uncategorizable, and very New York.

 

In 2018, the MoMA organized a comprehensive retrospective of my work and now includes my films in its permanent collection. My last film, Felix in Wonderland, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. In 2019, retrospectives of my films were shown at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, France, and the Film Library in Athens, Greece. I also showcase my other works (including drawings, monotype portraits, and installations) regularly at exhibitions, such as those that have been organized at the Ricard Foundation, the Mac Val, the Galerie du Cinéma, the Transpalette, the BBB, the Anne Barault Gallery (in France) and the Solar Gallery in Portugal. 

 

 

Marie Losier is a director whose films and videos have been showcased at multiple movie theaters, museums, galleries, and festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, IDFA, Tribeca, CPH:DOX, Cinéma du Réel, Torino, and Locarno. She studied American literature at the University of Nanterre, and fine art in New York’s Hunter College, before moving towards directing her brand of avant-garde, intimate, poetic, and whimsical biopics of filmmakers, musicians, and artists such as Alan Vega, the Kuchar brothers, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman, Tony Conrad, Felix Kubin, and Genesis P-Orridge. Her next film, The Residents: Behind the Mask, will center on the legendary American music collective.  

What?
+
Where?
+

In partnership with

Barberousse films logo
Barberousse Films

Founded in 2015, Barberousse Films is the reunion of three producers, Mathilde Delaunay, Enguerrand Déterville and François Martin Saint Léon.
Since its creation, Barberousse Films has produced some twenty short and feature films, including those by Pierre Léon, Pascale Bodet, Momoko Seto, Mihai Grecu, Pascal Cervo, Marie Losier, and Pierre Menahem, which have been awarded and selected at major festivals (Cannes, Locarno, FID Marseille, Tribeca, Rotterdam, Annecy...). In 2022, Nicolae, by Mihai Grecu, won the best short film award from the French Film Critics’ Syndicate. Le Feu au Lac, by Pierre Menahem, was in official selection at the Cannes Film Festival 2022 and Castells by Blanca Camell Galí and Poitiers by Jérôme Reybaud in Pardi di domani – Locarno 2022.

 

Learn more