Biography
Todd Chandler is a filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores American rituals, landscapes, and systems of power. His films and installations have been featured at True/False, IDFA, Doclisboa, ICA London, Hammer Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and Mass MoCA. His work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Field of Vision, International Documentary Association, Points North Institute, Jerome Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts. He is the recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2019 Creative Capital Award. Chandler has participated in residencies at Yaddo, Wexner Center, and Experimental Media Performing Arts Center.
His film Bulletproof screened at over two dozen festivals worldwide and won him the Hot Docs International Emerging Filmmaker Award. Bulletproof was broadcast on Independent Lens (PBS) and was called “dreamlike and startling” by the New York Times and “a quiet gut punch of a film” by the Guardian.
He is also an accomplished film editor. He was the lead editor and a human rights video advocacy trainer at WITNESS, edited the Academy Award nominated documentary short film In the Absence, directed by Seung-jun Yi, and Reid Davenport’s feature documentary I Didn’t See You There, which won Davenport the U.S. Documentary Directing Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and the Truer than Fiction Independent Spirit Award. He frequently works as a consulting editor on feature documentaries.
As an artist he works collaboratively and across disciplines. He has created immersive drive-in theater installations from salvaged materials, floated down the Mississippi and Hudson rivers on hand-built sculptural rafts, orchestrated national tours of his live-cinema work at museums, universities, rock clubs, backyards, bike shops, and assorted DIY spaces, and organized multi-day music festivals in the wilds of Pennsylvania.
He has taught in film and media departments at Brooklyn College, the New School, College of Staten Island, as well as at numerous community-based organizations and human rights groups. Todd Chandler is a filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores American rituals, landscapes, and systems of power. His films and installations have been featured at True/False, IDFA, Doclisboa, ICA London, Hammer Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and Mass MoCA. His work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Field of Vision, International Documentary Association, Points North Institute, Jerome Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts. He is the recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2019 Creative Capital Award. Chandler has participated in residencies at Yaddo, Wexner Center, and Experimental Media Performing Arts Center.
His film Bulletproof screened at over two dozen festivals worldwide and won him the Hot Docs International Emerging Filmmaker Award. Bulletproof was broadcast on Independent Lens (PBS) and was called “dreamlike and startling” by the New York Times and “a quiet gut punch of a film” by the Guardian.
He is also an accomplished film editor. He was the lead editor and a human rights video advocacy trainer at WITNESS, edited the Academy Award nominated documentary short film In the Absence, directed by Seung-jun Yi, and Reid Davenport’s feature documentary I Didn’t See You There, which won Davenport the U.S. Documentary Directing Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and the Truer than Fiction Independent Spirit Award. He frequently works as a consulting editor on feature documentaries.
As an artist he works collaboratively and across disciplines. He has created immersive drive-in theater installations from salvaged materials, floated down the Mississippi and Hudson rivers on hand-built sculptural rafts, orchestrated national tours of his live-cinema work at museums, universities, rock clubs, backyards, bike shops, and assorted DIY spaces, and organized multi-day music festivals in the wilds of Pennsylvania.
He has taught in film and media departments at Brooklyn College, the New School, College of Staten Island, as well as at numerous community-based organizations and human rights groups.