Bronx Documentary Center will screen RITA LEISTER: FOREST FOR THE TREES and Q&A with the filmmaker on Thursday, May 19, 2022 at 7:30p.m. This in-person presentation with award winning Leister, a photographer, photojournalist, filmmaker, will explore the physical and emotional aspects of a community of West Coast Canadian tree planters. A former Brooklyn resident, the filmmaker is now based in Toronto and Montreal.
"She is known for her ability to build close personal bonds with her subjects and for creating bespoke conceptual and aesthetic approaches to the wide variety of subjects she tackles—soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, women wrestlers, a women's psychiatric ward in war-time Baghdad, tree planters in Canada, etc. Her work has been published in hundreds of outlets, exhibited in nine countries, and is in major public art collections including The Canadian War Museum and The National Gallery of Canada. She received a nomination for Best Cinematography in a Feature Length Documentary at the 2022 Canadian Screen Awards for her first feature film "Forest for the Trees."