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Eric Leiser

Eric Leiser

Directing

Biography

Eric Leiser is an award-winning artist, experimental filmmaker, animator, holographer, puppeteer, writer, and former funeral director working in New York and born in California. An alumni of CalArt’s Experimental Animation program and the Fine Art program, Eric creates animated and live action feature films and shorts as well as intricate works integrating animation, puppetry, painting, holography, live performance and installation. Eric has made 4 feature films to date, Faustbook, Imagination, Glitch in the Grid and Apocalypsis. The upcoming 5th animated feature film Twilight Park is in production. Along with feature films, 70 short films ranging from 1997 to present, mostly compose the artist's filmography. Eric's brother and frequent collaborator Jeffrey Leiser created the music and sound design for the four features and 70 short films with a few exceptions. The Leiser Brothers share the writing credits for feature films Imagination and Twilight Park with the addition of collaborator Maude Swift. Eric is also a well known holographer and fine artist, a plethora of books on contemporary art, animation and physics/optics have included chapters on the artist's work. Eric's work is part of the permanent collection of the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, NL and over 50 film collections worldwide including fine artworks. Recent solo exhibitions include Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Binálé Video Art Biennial in Budapest, Roswell Museum in Roswell, NM, Centro Multimeios Museum and Planetarium in Porto, Filmhuis Cavia in Amsterdam, the Horse Hospital in London, Holocenter Museum in New York, Exploratorium Museum and Shapeshifters Cinema in the Bay Area, Galerie du Haut Pave Gallery in Paris, Galerie Entropia in Poland, Fringe Exhibitions Gallery and MaRS Gallery in Los Angeles, Sound of MU Gallery in Oslo, Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and Goldsmiths, University of London. Group exhibitions include The Whitney Museum of American Art, Katrupgårdsamlingen Museum in Copenhagen, Mass MOCA, The MIT Museum, MOMus Museum in Thessaloniki, The Ruben H. Fleet Space Museum, Art MûR Gallery, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, Cabinet Magazine among others. His animated/live action films have been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the MIT Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Museum of Modern Art Antwerp, The Istanbul Modern Museum of Art, MOMus Museum, MASS MoCA, Four-Dimensions Space Art Museum Beijing, Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas Museum de Buenos Aires, Roswell Museum, Aster Arts Plaza Hiroshima, The Wexner Center, (BFI) British Film Institute, Anthology Film Archives, Los Angeles Filmforum, Shapeshifters Cinema, No Name Cinema, San Francisco Film Society, Oxford University, Goldsmiths-University of London, Royal College of Art, Harvard University, California Institute of the Arts, The Art Institute in Chicago, The New School, Pratt Institute and the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing. Select film festivals include the Cannes Film Festival, Annecy International Animation Festival, Hiroshima International Animation Festival and the Cinanima Animation Festival. .

Known For

Pinnacles
9.0

Resulting from an ancient volcanic eruption, revered as sacred by the Chalun and Matsun Native American Tribes as the home of the Firebird/Thunderbird (California Condor) a supernatural being of power and strength. Pinnacles represents transcendent moments, spiritual guidance and forging new timelines within interpersonal landscapes.

Pinnacles

2022
Twilight Park
N/A

Twilight Park, a life size stop motion animated feature film about a boy Seraphim who along with Howie Heehaw; a rodeo show clown from Tibet, gets the chance to enter his narcoleptic/dementia addled Grandpa's mind and live out his past memories in order to save him.

Twilight Park

Norsk Folksang
6.0

Emerging from the sea onto land an axolotl swims through complex terrain parallel to a man searching for an encounter with God.

Norsk Folksang

2011
Imagination
5.0

Dr. Reineger, a famous neuro-psychologist, has become convinced that a twin girl named Anna has a rare form of Autism called Asperger's Syndrome, rendering her unable to cope with reality. As for her blind sister, Sarah, the doctor cannot say for sure why her imaginary visions map so close to Anna's. At home, unable to face reality, their father leaves the family. To escape the pain, the girls sink deeper and deeper into their imagination. When a major earthquake takes their mother's life, Reineger gets more involved with helping the now-orphaned twins, while struggling with his realization that the girls seem to be capable of prophetic visions. The girls escape the doctor's institution and a subsequent search finds no trace of them. Have they transcended the physical realm? A mixture of live action, stop motion animation and other techniques makes this film a fantastic journey into the realm of imagination.

Imagination

2007
LAND
8.0

LAND is a fluid series of formal land animation experiments based upon the imprint of landscapes in various locations and intuitive interpretations of those movements. Shot in New York, Thimble Islands Bear Island, Connecticut, Armstrong Redwoods, Sonoma County, California, Hastings, England. note* (part of the EYE Filmmuseum Permanent Collection)

LAND

2013
Broken Dream
N/A

In a time of universal manipulation, deceit and monopoly a failed attempt to strip our identity both individual and collective are transcended by our true in identity in Christ the Lamb.

Broken Dream

2012
Terra Incognita
6.0

Terra Incognita is a multi-plane cut out animation made from photocopies of 19th century illustrations made during the race to the poles and drawings by Eric Leiser. For the puppet performance it was flat-rod puppets on a proscenium stage with a screen behind them, onto which the animation Terra Incognita is projected. Many of the sea monster puppets and ships performed in sync with the animated ones, along with splashes of water and powdered chalk to mimic snowfall. These techniques came from my time studying puppet theater in Prague, in 2002, and learning from Svankmajer and Svankmajerova. It was a lot of fun to both animate and to perform live with Jeffrey's wonder score. At the same time the film comments on the colonial race to claim the Arctic by various countries—a race that, in a sense, is still going on today, but this time again for oil—and the murders of the Inuit people who had inhabited the land for millennia.

Terra Incognita

2002
Apocalypsis
5.6

Set in a parallel universe entering a black hole, a woman reading the book of Revelation has visions of regeneration during Anthropocene.

Apocalypsis

2018
Ambient Chaconne
6.0

A time-lapse animated meditation on geothermal energy, erosion, seismic activity and magma. Shot above the Yellowstone Caldera and amongst the Bryce Canyon hoodoos, the film explores how they connect these past cataclysms to the present endangered environment within the sixth mass extinction and future threats to an ecosystem already in collapse. The musical accompaniment, composed and performed by Pauline Kim Harris, is based on a reimagining of the Chaconne from the Partita No.2 in D minor (BWV 1004) by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Ambient Chaconne

2019
Tír na nÓg
6.0

a woman's spiritual journey in Ireland on All Hallow-Een

Tír na nÓg

2008
Psalms
N/A

A personal experimental exploration of the book of Psalms in the Holy Bible

Psalms

2003
Living Waters
5.0

John 4:13-14: Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life

Living Waters

2012
Herione: Deo
N/A

DEO A reimagining of Deo Gratias (ca. 1497) by Johannes Ockeghem. A Film by Eric Leiser. Animation by Eric Leiser. Composed by Pauline Kim Harris and Spencer Topel Deo is an acoustic-electronic transcription of Johannes Ockeghem’s stunning Deo Gratias devised as a complement to Ambient Chaconne. Notable as a 36-part canon, Ockeghem evokes singing of angels in heaven via an innovation on a traditional canon, using this ancient musical device as a kind of acoustic feedback delay. In essence, our Deo expands this idea of delays to a canon of thousands, in an ever expanding and infinite soundscape, where the melodies eventually dissolve into resonance.

Herione: Deo

2019
Dodo
N/A

the tale of the Dodo seen through a child's eyes

Dodo

2023
Cymatic Cocoon
6.0

This film explores cymatics and telepathy among twins

Cymatic Cocoon

2007
No image
N/A

Erik Leiser takes us on an unforgettable journey across the Icelandic landscape as he mixes live action and pixilation to produce an enchanting, timeless short film.

Landvættir

2004
Prelude
N/A

first stop motion animation puppet film by Eric Leiser completed in 2001. The film is a visual poem on Christ's command for believers to: deny self, pick up the cross daily and follow after Him. Matthew 16:24

Prelude

2001
Glitch in the Grid
7.8

Three artists struggling against the grid of society find spiritual renewal.

Glitch in the Grid

2011
Cure
5.0

a couple dreams of renewal during the covid-19 pandemic

Cure

2020
Apocalypsis:Theosis
6.0

“Revelation” (Gr. apokalypsis) means the uncovering of something that has been previously hidden, in this case the final triumph of the kingdom of God.

Apocalypsis:Theosis

2017