Brett Story is a non-fiction filmmaker and geographer based in Toronto and New York whose work explores landscapes of power and capitalist crises. Her films have screened at True/False, Oberhausen, Hot Docs, the Viennale, and Dok Leipzig, among other international festivals. She is also a prolific non-fiction writer and radio producer whose work has appeared in The Nation, Camera Obscura, and on programs of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Brett's films include Land of Destiny (2010), The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016), and CamperForce (2017). The Prison in Twelve Landscapes was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and was a nominee for Best Canadian Feature Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards. The documentary, an exploration of the external geographies of the U.S. prison system, was a New York Times’ critics pick and was broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2017. At MacDowell she was working on a new feature non-fiction film titled The Hottest August.. After MacDowell she participated in the Sundance edit lab in Park City, Utah with the project.
Brett holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Toronto and is the author of a forthcoming book, The Prison Out of Place: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America. Brett was a 2016 Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Fellow, and was named a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow for film and video. She currently teaches documentary film and video as an assistant professor at Ryerson University’s School of Image Arts.
Brett Story
Studios
Phi Beta
Brett Story worked in the Phi Beta studio.
Funded by the Phi Beta Fraternity, a national professional fraternity of music and speech founded in 1912, Phi Beta Studio was built between 1929–1931 of granite quarried on the MacDowell grounds. The small studio is a simple in design, but displays a pleasing combination of materials with its granite walls and colorful slate roofing. Inside is…