SFU professors Martin Gotfrit and Patricia Gruben, and set designer Marian Wihak

Patricia Gruben is an American born filmmaker who taught film studies at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada until 2018.[1][2][3] As a director, she has made four feature films and a number of shorts.[1][4][5] Gruben has worked in many different positions within the film industry, from being property master to directing a feature film.[1][4][6] In 2015, Gruben was the recipient of the Teamsters 155 Woman of the Year Award given by Vancouver Women in Film and TV.[2][6]

Biography

Gruben was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1947.[1][3][7][8] She attended Rice University where she studied anthropology.[9] Gruben went on to attend the University of Texas where she studied film.[1][6][9] After completing her graduate studies, she moved to Toronto in the early 1970s.[1][6][9] Over the following years Gruben worked in different fields of the film industry, from commercials to productions designed for children.[1][4] Over the course of her career, she has worked as a director, an editor, an assistant director, a cinematographer, a propmaster, an art director, a writer, a set decorator and a producer.[1][4][6]

Career

Her first film made after completing school, The Central Character (1979),[10] was a short.[1][4][6] The Women’s Companion to International Film, edited by Annette Kuhn and Susannah Radstone, states that it "received immediate attention as the work of a major new figure in Canada’s Avant Garde."[1] Gruben went on to make a forty-minute experimental short, Sifted Evidence (1982), which received international attention from festivals. After its screening at the New York Film Festival, Sifted Evidence earned an Honorable Mention in J. Hoberman's Top Ten list for the Village Voice.[1][6]

Gruben worked for ten years in Toronto as a set decorator[11][12] on projects like Spasms (1982),[13] a horror film directed by William Fruet, before initiating her own first feature.[5][11] She wrote and directed Low Visibility (1984),[5][11][14] a nonlinear mystery featuring a man who had apparently lost his memory and ability to communicate.[1] She also wrote and directed Deep Sleep (1990), a psychological thriller starring Megan Follows (Anne of Green Gables), and Ley Lines (1993),[5][11] a documentary about the fictions we create from our family history, following her own imaginary lineage from Texas to Germany and the Canadian Arctic.[15]

Gruben began to teach at Simon Fraser University in 1982.[1][4][16] In 1987, she and Colin Browne founded the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters.[2][6] The program was part of the Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, which received funding from both the government of British Columbia and the university.[2] The purpose of the program was to assist Canadian screenwriters by providing the opportunity to work with professionals in the industry.[2][6][17] In 2013, a Globe and Mail article announced that the program would end in 2014 due to lack of funding.[17] However it was adopted by the Whistler Film Festival, where it continues as the WFF Screenwriters Lab[2]

In addition to filmmaking, Gruben has created The Secret Doctrine, a play about the Russian occultist Helena Blavatsky, which was staged in Vancouver in 2013, starring Gabrielle Rose; and an accompanying art installation, The Veil of Nature, which simulated the laboratory of Oliver Lodge, a 19th century physicist and occult scientist.

As an associate professor at Simon Fraser University, Gruben taught courses in film production, screenwriting and film studies, specializing in nonlinear narrative and Indian cinema.[18] During this time she published numerous scholarly articles on film, literature and cultural studies while developing several screenplays. Since leaving SFU in 2018, she has made two films: the short drama Floating Islands (2019) and the hybrid feature film Heart of Gold (2023).

She has been on the executive board of the Hari Sharma Foundation and the South Asian Film Education Society since 2012, and has served on numerous other boards and arts juries. From 2015-2019 she was on the permanent jury for the Daryl Duke Prize.[19] She is married to composer Martin Gotfrit and has two sons, both musicians and community workers.

Awards

Gruben received the Teamsters 155 Woman of the Year Award in 2015 from Women in Film and Television, a non-for-profit organization that hosts the awards.[2][6][20] The award requires that the recipient be "a woman who has achieved a significant success in the field of film or television, and who is recognized for mentoring other women in the industry."[6]

Filmography[21]

  • The Central Character (1979)
  • Sifted Evidence (1982)[22]
  • Low Visibility (1984)
  • Deep Sleep (1990)
  • Ley Lines (1993)
  • Before it Blows (1997)
  • Floating Islands (2019)
  • Heart of Gold (2023)

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Ed. Kuhn, Annette; Radstone, Susannah. (1990). "Patricia Gruben." In The Women's Companion to International Film (pp. 182-183). London: Virago Press.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 EIC (2015-06-29). "SFU professor Patricia Gruben wins Woman of the Year Award". The Peak. Retrieved 2022-07-21.
  3. 1 2 Film Indexes Online.(2013-2015). Patricia Gruben. Retrieved from Film Indexes Online.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Movie Reviews". The New York Times. 2022-07-21. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-07-21.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Women in Film and Television Vancouver. (n.d.). Patricia Gruben. Retrieved from Women in Film and Television Vancouver: http://www.womeninfilm.ca/cgi/page.cgi/_membership.html/186-Patricia-Gruben
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Women in Film and Television Vancouver . (n.d.). 2015 Spotlight Award Winners. Retrieved from Women in Film and Television Vancouver: http://www.womeninfilm.ca/2015_Spotlight_Awards.html
  7. ↑ National Gallery of Canada. (n.d.). Patricia Gruben. Retrieved from National Gallery of Canada: http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artist.php?iartistid=2202
  8. ↑ Two sources state that Gruben was born in Chicago, one (a review from an entertainment review of one of her films) states that she is Texas-born. Leydon, Joe. (1993). Ley Lines. Variety Movie Reviews, 11-11
  9. 1 2 3 Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. (n.d.). Patricia Gruben. Retrieved from CFMDC
  10. ↑ Several sources differ on the year of The Central Character: Ed. Kuhn, Annette; Radstone, Susannah. (1990). "Patricia Gruben." In The Women's Companion to International Film (pp. 182-183). London: Virago Press and Brennan, Sandra R. (n.d.). Patricia Gruben Full Biography. Retrieved from New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/movies/person/198536/Patricia-Gruben/biography state The Central Character (1979) However McHugh, Kathleen. (1990, April). The films of Patricia Gruben Subjectivity of Space. Retrieved from Jump Cut: http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC35folder/PatriciaGruben.html and Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. (n.d.). Patricia Gruben. Retrieved from CFMDC: states The Central Character (1977)
  11. 1 2 3 4 "Movie Reviews". The New York Times. 2022-07-21. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-07-21.
  12. ↑ Film Indexes Online. (2013-2015). Spasms. Retrieved from Film Indexes Online.
  13. ↑ Also known as Death Bite. Directed by William Fruet. Film Indexes Online. (2013-2015). Spasms. Retrieved from Film Indexes Online.
  14. ↑ "The films of Patricia Gruben by Kathleen McHugh". www.ejumpcut.org. Retrieved 2022-07-21.
  15. ↑ Leydon, Joe. (1993) Ley Lines. Variety Movie Reviews, 11-11.
  16. ↑ Four sources differ on the year in which Patricia Gruben began teaching at Simon Fraser University: Jones, Megan. (2015, June 29). SFU professor Patricia Gruben wins Woman of the Year Award. Retrieved from The Peak:http://www.the-peak.ca/2015/06/sfu-professor-patricia-gruben-wins-woman-of-the-year-award/ and Women in Film and Television Vancouver . (n.d.). 2015 Spotlight Award Winners. Retrieved from Women in Film and Television Vancouver: http://www.womeninfilm.ca/2015_Spotlight_Awards.html state that she began in 1982. Ed. Kuhn, Annette; Radstone, Susannah. (1990). "Patricia Gruben." In The Women's Companion to International Film (pp. 182-183). London: Virago Press and Brennan, Sandra R. (n.d.). Patricia Gruben Full Biography. Retrieved from New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/movies/person/198536/Patricia-Gruben/biography state that she began in 1984.
  17. 1 2 Lederman, Marsha (2013-11-19). "Celebrated B.C. screenwriting program Praxis to fold". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2022-07-21.
  18. ↑ Simon Fraser University. (n.d.). Patricia Gruben. Retrieved from Simon Fraser University: https://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/instructors/e-h/patricia-gruben.html
  19. ↑ "The Daryl Duke Prize | Changing the world, one story at a time". Retrieved 2022-07-21.
  20. ↑ Women in Film and Television Vancouver. (n.d.). Mission and History. Retrieved from Women in Film and Television Vancouver: http://www.womeninfilm.ca/Mission_Statement.html
  21. ↑ This list was made with the following sources: Brennan, Sandra R. (n.d.). Patricia Gruben Full Biography. Retrieved from New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/movies/person/198536/Patricia-Gruben/biography McHugh, Kathleen. (1990, April). The films of Patricia Gruben Subjectivity of Space. Retrieved from Jump Cut: http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC35folder/PatriciaGruben.html Women in Film and Television Vancouver. (n.d.). Patricia Gruben. Retrieved from Women in Film and Television Vancouver: http://www.womeninfilm.ca/cgi/page.cgi/_membership.html/186-Patricia-Gruben Critchlow, Jane; Véronneau, Pierre. (1990). An Unexpected Emergence. Massachusetts Review, Inc., 213-226. Film Indexes Online. (2013-2015). Patricia Gruben. Retrieved from Film Indexes Online. Ed. Kuhn, Annette; Radstone, Susannah. (1990). "Patricia Gruben." In The Women's Companion to International Film (pp. 182-183). London: Virago Press. Leydon, Joe. (1993). Ley Lines. Variety Movie Reviews, 11-11. Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. (n.d.). Patricia Gruben. Retrieved from CFMDC: http://www.cfmdc.org/user/8956
  22. ↑ One sources differs on the year for this film: Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. (n.d.). Patricia Gruben. Retrieved from CFMDC: states Sifted Evidence (1981)
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