Abigail Child

Abigail Child is a filmmaker, poet, and writer who has been active in experimental writing and media since the 1970s. She has completed more than thirty film and video works and installations, and six books. Child's early film work addressed the interplay between sound and image through reshaping narrative tropes, prefiguring many concerns of contemporary film and media.
Academics.
In 1968, Abigail Child graduated from Radcliffe College in Harvard University with a degree in history and literature. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Film. She has taught at several universities, including New York University, Massachusetts College of Art, and Hampshire College. She has been the chair of Film and Animation department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston since 2000 and was appointed to a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In 2009, she was awarded the Rome Prize.
Career in film, writing, and poetry.
Child began making films in the 1970s, producing seven independent documentaries shot on 16mm. From the middle of the 70s she turned to experimental montage and in the 80s her work explores gender and strategies for remaking narrative. "Is This What You Were Born For?" is a major, seven-part experimental work from this period, completed over nine years, which included the cult classics "Mayhem" and "Covert Action". (see Filmography). In the 90s Child poetically envisioned and interrogated public spaces in such films as "B/side" (1996), about urban homelessness on the Lower East Side of New York city, and "Below the New: A Russian Chronicle" (1999), filmed in St. Petersburg.
In the 21st century, Child's film and video has explored history, memory, and cultural experiences—the politics of place and identity. Digital works like "Cake + Steak" (2004) and "The Future Is Behind You" (2005) investigate the awkward drama of the everyday, often utilizing found material to examine the past. "Mirror World" (2006) is a multi-screen installation that incorporates parts of Child's “foreign film” series to explore narrative excess. Key works include "Surface Noise" (2000), "Dark Dark" (2001), "Where The Girls Are" (2002), "Cake and Steak" (2004), "The Future Is Behind You" (2004), "To and No Fro" (2005), and "Mirror World" (2006). Her feature video documentary "On The Downlow" (2007)), is an exploration of bisexuality and an intimate look at a little-viewed underground scene.
In 2012, Child completed a feature film, "Shape of Error," an imaginary “home movie” based on the diaries of Mary Shelley during her marriage with Percy Shelley.
Child is also the author of five books of poetry (published between 1983 and 2012) and a book of critical writings: "This Is Called Moving: A Critical Poetics of Film" (2005).
A collection of writings by various authors on "Is This What You Were Born For?", including a DVD of the film series, was published in 2011.