Jake Yuzna is cultural producer whose practice includes films, curatorial projects, design, publications, nightlife, and educational initiatives.

For their work, Yuzna has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, Jerome Foundation, Philanthrofund Foundation, Frameline Foundation, Creative Time, State Arts Board of Minnesota, IFP and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Their debut feature film, Open, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, where it became the first American film to receive the Teddy Jury Prize. Open was awarded Best Narrative Feature at the Tel Aviv Film Festival, Best Performance at NewFest, and for the film, Yuzna was named a Four in Focus Filmmaker by OutFest.

Yuzna’s work has screened at the Cannes Film Festival, New Museum of Contemporary Art, the British Film Institute, Oberhausen Film Festival, Red Cat of Los Angeles, among others. Yuzna founded the cinema program at the Museum of Arts and Design (NYC) and the Inclusive and Socially Conscious Filmmaking Lab at FilmNorth (Minneapolis). Continuing as the Director of Public Programs, they headed the institution’s experimental cultural production initiatives that included the museum’s inaugural biennial, the first retrospective on the medium of VHS, as well as the first publication of the education department. In addition, Yuzna has curated projects for Performa: The NYC Biennial of Performance Art, the Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art, the City of Los Angeles, and SCCA-Center for Contemporary Art–Ljubljana. Their scholarship has been collected by Yale and New York Universities and they are currently a contributor to Artforum International Magazine.

They can be contacted here.