Marianna Marta Milhorat, MFA

Marianna Milhorat is an American-Canadian filmmaker and artist whose research-creation examines the power of cinema in conservation and ecology. Taking extended approaches to nonfiction film, her work pushes form and aesthetic to provoke new ways of seeing and thinking about the current geologic era and make perceptible humans' entangled relationships with other species and environments.

Milhorat has presented her work at festivals and galleries worldwide, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, DOK Leipzig, Whitechapel Gallery, Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Cork International Film Festival, and DokuFest. Her current research-creation project, Multispecies Sensory Filmmaking: Imaging Microbial Worlds in the St. Lawrence Dead Zone (2025 -), is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Additionally, her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Finlandia Foundation National, and Serlachius Residency. Her recent feature, Just Above the Surface of the Earth (For a Coming Extinction) (2004), was awarded the Documentary Feature Award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival and Moving Creatures Award at Mimesis Documentary Festival. Prior to Concordia, Milhorat taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Loyola University Chicago, and the University of Illinois-Chicago.

MFA, Moving Image, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2012

BFA, Film Production, Concordia University, 2007

Research Areas

Moving image arts; Experimental, hybrid, and creative non-fiction film and video; Expanded documentary; Environmental art; Anthropocene studies; Ecofeminism; Sound art