/ CONTACT \

/ BIO \

Elliot Montague is a New York-based experimental and fictional narrative filmmaker. Oftentimes through a phenomenological approach, Montague's films engage the tenuous boundaries between bodies in states of transition, the complexities of family relationships, and the failures of language. Montague has taught film and video for the Tribeca Film Institute and the Urban Arts Partnership in New York City, the Rockport Film College and the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine, and at the University of California, San Diego Department of Visual Arts.

His films have shown at the Media Arts Festival in Osnabruck, Germany, the DOKMA festival in Maribor, Slovenia, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Paris Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, the Anthology Film Archives in New York, and the Dashanzi Arts Festival in Beijing, China, among others. Montague is a recipient of the 2007 Princess Grace Award for his MFA graduate thesis film at UC San Diego and of the 2009 Special Projects Grant also from the Princess Grace Foundation for his multimedia collaborative project, WREST. Montague's film work is partially distributed through Women Make Movies in New York City and Video Data Bank in Chicago.

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Elliot Montague

Education

Film and Video Works

(Director, Writer, Producer, Cinematographer & Editor - unless indicated)

Professional and Teaching Experience

Film/Video Screenings and Festivals

Visitng Artist Lectures

Grants and Awards

Press About The Artist

• Filmmaker Examines Trans Pregnancy: Gaywired Magazine, April 24, 2008

  http://www.gaywired.com/Article.cfm?ArticlePage=1&ID=18824

• Filmmaker Examines Trans/Pregnant Bodies: San Francisco Bay Times, April 17, 2008

  http://www.sfbaytimes.com/?sec=article&article_id=7942

• UC San Diego Filmmaker Receives Princess Grace Film Award: UCSD News, Sept. 10 2007

  http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/awards/09-07PrincessGraceFoundationCC-.asp

• Initial Princess Grace Foundation Award: Graduate Film Scholarship: Visual Arts, Sept. 12 2007

  http://va-grad.ucsd.edu/~drupal/node/335

Partial Distribution

• Women Make Movies, New York, NY

  www.wmm.com

• Video Data Bank, Chicago, IL

  www.vdb.com

/ Artist's Statement \

I am drawn toward moments when language fails us, when we are suspended in the discomforts of uncertainty. This often occurs upon the meeting of a stranger whose body before us cannot be clearly read. The contradictory body surprises us as it resonates a surprisingly high voice, the face seems to oscillate between a young boy and a woman in her late-twenties, and the chest is ambiguously flat. How do we receive this body before us without the knowledge of their age, sex, or race? More importantly, when and how can this moment extend beyond a brief two minutes - perhaps into a relationship, where this uncertainty evolves into sites of mutual fluidity?

How may the restrictions of film, specifically the fictional narrative, become sites of this complication? There is an ever-present binding relationship with language. As viewers, we have grown desensitized through the saturation of vision. Vision has become passive, rather than actively achieved. How does one film the body, and in doing so, transgress or complicate the physical signifiers through the cinematic unfolding of a story, through fantasy, or through such formal strategies as the treatment of time and distance? Or more specifically, how does one portray loss, sex, or love as though we are experiencing it for the first time?

My film work interrogates the tenuous boundaries between bodies in states of transition, surveying particular sites of convergence between these liminal existences. I am interested in rearticulating and exposing the complexities of queer bodies and spaces, specifically questioning how they are portrayed within independent and experimental film communities. I approach film as a medium through which to question and interact with dominant modes of knowledge production, in order to complicate mainstream representations of gender and sexuality. My work resonates with contemporary concerns and experiences of transgender, intersexed, and genderqueer bodies, yet attempts to reach audiences beyond the queer communities. It exemplifies the importance of proximity and exchange between the personal body and the language through which it is produced. Through its perspectives, my work strives for a language that undertakes the challenge of translating how bodies are made to mean.