Bio

Ken Paul Rosenthal is an independent filmmaker and educator whose lyrical, character-driven documentaries explore the spectrum of difference. These stories of trauma and transformation are presented against a backdrop of urban and natural landscapes, archival social hygiene films, re-authored home movies, and animated text. His early hand-made films feature alternative photochemical and bacterial processes, direct manipulation techniques, and multiple projection performance.

Ken's work has screened widely at national and international film festivals and venues, including: Rotterdam Int'l Film Festival; Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival; DokuFest Int'l Documentary Film Festival; American Documentary Film Festival; Documentary Edge Film Festival; Ann Arbor Film Festival; New York City MoMA; The Guggenheim; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Anthology Film Archives; San Francisco Cinematheque; The British Film Institute; Museu do Chiado Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art.

He is the recipient of numerous film festival awards, a Kodak Cinematography Award, the Berkeley Film Foundation’s Al Bendich Award, a University Film & Video Association Award, and a California Humanities Documentary Grant. His Mad Dance Mental Health Film Trilogy circulates in over 375 academic and public libraries, screened at 74 film festivals, and has been presented in person at hundreds of universities, mental health symposia, peer support networks, and community events worldwide. Ken holds an MA in Creative & Interdisciplinary Arts, an MFA in Cinema Production, and has taught film production at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore; the Academy of Art University, San Francisco; and San Francisco City College.

Rosenthal's in-progress feature documentary Julia Vinograd: Between Spirit and Stone tells the story of iconic Berkeley street poet Julia Vinograd, who emerged from the 1960's Free Speech Movement fighting state oppression with bubbles instead of bricks. In his spare time, Ken stages an emotional wellness pop-up, Your Empathy Stand (Y.E.S.) in public parks, freely offering active listening to one and all.

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Artist Statement

I make film to nurture a more intimate relationship with the animate earth, help alleviate human suffering by cultivating beauty, and enrich the world with kindness and compassion. I aspire to produce work that is critical and contemplative, poetic and provocative—a sensual intelligence that touches the mind through the heart.

I’m interested in the capacity of the camera frame to direct our attention in terms of what and how we see; the presence of human gesture made manifest through the flickering tactility of cinema; and the challenge to retain the texture of that gesture in the realm of one’s and zero’s. How can we trust our own eyes in these technocratic times when pictures are as easily produced and reproduced as they are disposed of? What does it mean to be authentic when our experience of the world is increasingly virtual? How can we ground ourselves in a culture of distractions mediated by an ever-shifting media landscape? I strive to answer these questions through my filmmaking practice.

For me, the process of making film and the exploration of consciousness are interdependent paths. I film, not simply to ‘take pictures’, but to connect more deeply to my subject, my self, my community—and the big picture.