Patricia Rozema

Considered part of the informally defined collection of independent filmmakers to make up the Toronto New Wave in the late 1980s and early 1990s, filmmaker, television director, artist and educator Patricia Rozema (b. 1958) found breakout success at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival when her first feature, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, nabbed the Prix de la Jeunesse in the Director’s Fortnight section, making it the first English-language Canadian film in the festival’s 40-year history to win an award. Rozema’s subsequent career, which has encompassed narrative features, shorts, documentaries and episodes of hit television series as both director and writer, maintains her first feature’s lighthearted irreverence, stylistic bravado, eye for magical realism and distinctly queer sensibility. Currently preparing her next feature and inspiring the next generation of filmmakers as an adjunct professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Rozema joins the Academy Museum and the UCLA Film & Television Archive for a weekend-long trip through her playful outlook on artmaking.

Curation and notes by K.J. Relth-Miller, Academy Museum; Amanda Salazar, UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Special thanks to our community partner: UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.