Vincenzo Mistretta

Vincenzo (“Vince”) Mistretta is a filmmaker and visual artist. He was born in Sicily and immigrated to the United States with his family as a child. In his adult life he has lived in Buffalo, N.Y.; New York City; and Palermo, Sicily. He began his career as a visual artist in 1989 after graduating from Pratt Institute in New York City with a BFA in Painting. His paintings have been exhibited in Italy and the U.S. and are in numerous collections in Italy and France.

Mistretta began making films in 1988 in New York. He received an MA in Media Study and Italian Literature from the University at Buffalo in 1998 and an MFA in Media Study from the same institution in 2006. He has worked in various genres including experimental, narrative, and documentary film, often utilizing a hybrid of the three. Recurring themes in his work range from cultural identity and language to gender and sexuality to formal concerns with the material essence of film itself. His longstanding interest in political activism has led him to produce a series of documentaries on the Women in Black peace network in Buffalo and New York City, and in 2006 he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to continue his research and documentation of Women in Black in Rome and elsewhere in Europe. In 2011 he received a Channels grant from Squeaky Wheel/Buffalo Media Resources to work with the not-for-profit Clean Air Coalition of WNY in Tonawanda, N.Y. on a documentary about the organization. After the project was over, he maintained his close ties with the group and has subsequently served on its board of directors.

Mistretta has received a Miquel Vinciguerra Filmmaking Grant, as well as fellowships and grants from the Niagara (N.Y.) Council for the Arts, the Erie County (N.Y.) Arts Council, the Experimental Television Center, and others. He has screened and exhibited his work internationally at venues and festivals including Open Video Projects and the Arcipelago Film Festival in Rome; the O'Curt Film Festival in Naples; Netwerk /Center for Contemporary Art, Brussels; and the New York International Film Festival and the International Independent Film Festival in New York City. He has also presented papers at several academic conferences on gender, popular culture, Italian film, and globalization at Rutgers University (Newark, N.J.) and the University at Buffalo as well as the 13th International Oral History Conference in Rome, Italy.

Mistretta has taught filmmaking and film analysis at the University at Buffalo, SUNY Fredonia, and Fredonia State University. He has also worked as a curator at Acefalo Art Gallery in Palermo, Italy, and media programmer at Open Video Projects, a video archive based in Rome that facilitates video art/film screenings throughout the city and abroad. His video production company, The Ricecooker Productions, serves as a home base for his work on television commercials, independent productions, and website design. Mistretta is a frequent collaborator with other video and filmmakers, including work as a cinematographer for projects by Alan Rhodes, Brian Milbrand, Ruth Goldman, and other artists.

For more information on Vincenzo Mistretta’s work, visit www.vincenzomistretta.net.