Biography

Jesse Lerner is a filmmaker and writer based in Los Angeles. His documentaries include Frontierland (with Rubén Ortiz Torres), about the blurred Latino experience in the United States; Ruins (about the history of Mexican archeology and the traffic in fakes), The Atomic Sublime (about Abstract Expressionism and the Cold War), The Absent Stone (with Sandra Rozental, about the monolith of Coatlinchan) and The American Egypt (about the Mexican Revolution in Yucatán). He directed the short films Magnavoz, T.S.H., and Natives (with Scott Sterling). His films were on display at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art (2004, 2000, 1996, 1992), the Rotterdam International Film Festival (2011), the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2005, 1999), and the Aztlán Today exhibit at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. These films were featured at mid-career surveys at the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the Cineteca Nacional (Mexico City), Anthology Film Archives (New York City), and the Churubusco Studios (Mexico City). His books include F is for Phony (with Alexandra Juhasz), a survey of faked documentaries, The Shock of Modernity, The Maya of Modernism, Ism Ism Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America (with Luciano Piazza), The Catherwood Project, How to Read el Pato Pascual (with Rubén Ortiz Torres), L.A. Collects L.A., Lean-Drok-Atz (with Ana Longoni and Mariano Mestman), and The Mexperimental Cinema (with Rita Gonzalez). Two of these publications were associated with film series: Ism Ism Ism (which showed at the Los Angeles Filmforum, the Museo de Arte Moderno Buenos Aires, and the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía) and The Mexperimental Cinema (screened at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive, Mexico City's Centro Nacional de las Artes, and the Harvard Film Archive). He has also curated other film, photography, and fine arts exhibitions at the National Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City (Palacio de Bellas Artes), the Schindler House/MAK Center, the Guggenheim Museums (in New York and Bilbao), and the Robert Flaherty Seminar. He has lectured extensively on film and other visual arts at institutions including CalArts, Princeton University, the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, the Freie Universitat Berlin, the Museo Amparo, University College London, the Getty Museum, the Hammer Museum, Cornell University, the Museo Nacional de Antropología (Mexico City), the Berlin Documentary Forum, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.