Moon Molson, Lewis Center for the Arts

Assistant Professor of Visual Arts (on leave 2020-21)

About

Molson’s short films Pop Foul (2007), Crazy Beats Strong Every Time (2011), and most recently The Bravest, the Boldest (2014), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, screened at over 250 international film festivals, and have since received more than 100 awards worldwide, including the Grand Jury Prizes at Palm Springs, South by Southwest (SXSW), and the Student Academy Awards. He has attended the 2008 Sundance Screenwriters & Directors Labs, the 2008 Film Independent (FIND) Directors Labs, the 2015 Warner Brothers Television Directors' Workshop, and 2016 FOX Global Directors Initiative as a Fox Director Fellow. Molson was named a 2017 Pew Foundation Fellow, a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow in Film-Video, and was one of Filmmaker Magazine's “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in Summer 2007. He has received grants from The Jerome Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Sundance Institute.

Molson’s films tell epic stories through the lives of contemporary characters using, in his words, “the language of the streets." Molson’s work examines urban masculinity, legacies of trauma, and family dynamics as he strives to “strike a balance between gritty realism, vernacular lyricism, stark humor, and the surrealism of dreams and hallucinations.”

Molson has taught as an assistant professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 2015. He has previously taught at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and the New York Film Academy. He received his A.B. in English literature, film studies and philosophy from Dartmouth College and his M.F.A. in film from Columbia University.