Capsule Bio
Dustin Morrow is an Emmy-winning filmmaker, bestselling author, programmer, podcaster and educator. He is a tenured Professor in the School of Film at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches courses in digital cinema production and film studies. He previously taught at Temple University, Monmouth College and the University of Iowa. Before re-entering academia, Morrow was an editor and director of short-form projects and series television in Los Angeles. Prof. Morrow has written books and essays; exhibited photography; produced and hosted a web series; directed a dramatic narrative podcast; produced a podcast focused on 1980s cinema; programmed film festivals; directed study away programs in Dublin, London and NYC; given a TED Talk; and is an in-demand speaker at festivals and conferences in both the U.S. and abroad. He has written, produced, edited and directed dozens of short and feature films in narrative, documentary, and experimental forms. Learn more about his work at www.dustinmorrow.com.
Full Bio
Dustin Morrow is an Emmy-winning filmmaker, bestselling author, programmer, podcaster and educator with two decades of experience in professional film and media production, as well as teaching and building curriculum at the university level. As a media artist, his works frequently explore issues of and relationships between landscape/space and personal, communal and cultural identities; the relationship between music and the moving image; intersections of traditional cinema and emerging media; the actor-director relationship; 1980s cinema; and genre filmmaking. He was born and raised in western Illinois, and received his MFA from the Department of Cinematic Arts at the University of Iowa. He is currently a tenured Professor in the School of Film at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches courses in digital cinema production and film studies. He previously taught at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he was brought in to revise the media production curriculum; at Monmouth College in Illinois; and at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Prof. Morrow’s films have won numerous awards and been shown in venues around the world. He has written about film and pop culture for a host of publications, and his photography has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions. Before re-entering academia, Morrow was an editor and director of short-form projects and series television in Los Angeles, for such clients as Sony Pictures, MTV, FoxSports, the Discovery Channel, and for such filmmakers as Spike Jonze, Michael Apted, Steven Soderbergh, Guy Ritchie, and (as directors) Kathy Bates and Denzel Washington. He continues to operate his own independent production company, Little Swan Pictures, for which projects have taken him as far away as the Aleutian Sea.
Mr. Morrow is the author of the book Kathleen Turner on Acting: Conversations about Film, Television, and Theater. The book is structured around a series of conversations Morrow conducted with the iconic actress about subjects such as the relationship between an actor and a director, the preparation an actor must do for a role, and the pursuit of acting as a profession. The book was endorsed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Sofia Coppola and published by Skyhorse Publishing and Simon & Schuster. It was reviewed positively by The New York Times and was featured on Salon, Larry King Now, Good Morning America and CBS This Morning. The audiobook, narrated by Mr. Morrow and the legendary actress, was released by Audible. Prof. Morrow is also the co-author of the Focal Press textbook Producing for TV and New Media. The fourth edition of that book features new sections on the streaming media landscape as well as interactive media and virtual reality. The book has been a core text in dozens of university-level media production curricula across the U.S.
Prof. Morrow’s feature film Black Pool, a thriller that he wrote and directed, tells a taut revenge story set against the backdrop of the political conflict in Northern Ireland. The film was shot partially in Dublin and Belfast, and was picked up at the Cannes Film Festival by Mutiny Pictures and Mill Creek Entertainment. It has screened at more than two dozen film festivals around the world and won several awards.
Among Mr. Morrow’s other works are a feature-film contemporary musical called Everything Went Down, which was the subject of a TED Talk and has screened at film festivals around the world, taken Best Film honors at five film festivals, and was a streaming success on Hulu. Among his many short films are Amidst the Stars, a sci-fi short about an astronaut stranded in space; Dead Mall, an experimental documentary about the shifting role of the shopping mall in American culture; The Mall Man, a darkly comedic look at a failing shopping mall; Red Harvest, an indictment of Reagan-era farm policies and their lasting effects on the rural Midwest; and Treetops, an avant-garde short about the relationship between image-making technologies and the natural world. All of Prof. Morrow’s short films have exhibited widely in both domestic and international film festivals.
Additionally, Prof. Morrow directed the limited-run dramatic podcast series Short of Breath, which was programmed by several new media festivals and conferences. He also produces and appears weekly on The Long Rewind, a podcast focusing on the cinema of the 1980s. Both Short of Breath and The Long Rewind are available on all major podcasting platforms.
Among Prof. Morrow’s other works are Ground London, an experimental documentary short exploring the British capital’s urban landscapes, which screened and won awards at festivals worldwide and was curated in Ohio State University’s Journal of Short Film; an anthology of short films examining Irish identity entitled Firinne: Searching for Ireland, which has screened in festivals and museums in the U.S. and Ireland and was curated by Ireland’s An Lar TV as a culturally significant work; The Marriage of Figaro, a telefilm production of the classic opera produced for Comcast Television; Laptop, a short documentary about electronic music that premiered in Cambridge at M.I.T.; and Film versus Film, a cinema discussion forum produced as both a television series and a popular web series.
Professor Morrow has received grants for his work totaling more than half a million dollars.
Mr. Morrow was the Director of the Greenfield Youth Film Festival in Philadelphia for three years. The Greenfield Youth Film Festival is among the largest youth-centered film education programs in the world. He is the Founder/Director of the Portland Music Video Festival, one of the only festivals in the country dedicated exclusively to the art and craft of music videos. He has also programmed for the Hollywood Theater in Portland, the Portland Film Festival, and the Reel Music Festival; and he has juried for many festivals, including the Student Academy Awards. He is an in-demand speaker at conferences, film festivals and workshops nationwide about issues related to film production and scholarship.
A passionate advocate of study-away education, Prof. Morrow has during his summers run programs in London and Dublin, as well as taught documentary filmmaking in Northern Ireland. At Temple University, he authored a new certificate program in Globalization and Intercultural Communication. He directed the University of Oregon’s film-centered summer program in Dublin, and he designed and directed a program incorporating both film studies and production in New York City.
Learn more about Professor Morrow and his work at www.dustinmorrow.com.