PROFILE
Lisanne Skyler
Professor, School of Theatre, Film and Television
School of Theatre, Film & Television
B.A. in English from U.C. Berkeley; M.A. in Cinema from San Francisco State University
Lisanne Skyler is an independent Spiirt Award nominated and award-winning, internationally distributed screenwriter/director of critically acclaimed documentary, feature, branded and short films for HBO, PBS, Sundance Channel and international platforms all over the word. Exploring complex social issues through a personal lens, her films have been selected for the world's most prestigious film festivals, including the New York Film Festival, Sundance, AFI Fest, South x Southwest, the San Francisco International and the Venice Biennale. She is repped by Zero Gravity, Los Angeles.
For her feature film debut, the critically acclaimed Sundance competition and Venice Film Festival selected dramatic feature Getting To Know You, adapted from stories by Joyce Carol Oates and starrring Heather Matarazzo, Zach Braff and Bebe Neuwirth, Skyler received a FIPRESCI SPECIAL JURY AWARD at the Stockholm International Film Festival and a Film Independent INDEPENDENT SPIRIT SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD nomination. Getting To Know You is now available on Tubi and Shout Factory.
Skyler wrote and directed the Oscar-Shortlisted and globally released HBO Documentary Film Brillo Box (3¢ off), which debuted on all HBO platforms and ran on HBO/MAX for 8 years, was released in over 300 countries and is now distributed by Cinema Guild. In 2021, her searing, historic South Central Los Angeles documentary No Loans Today (Sundance FIlm Festival) was acquired and preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archives.
For her 1970s period drama Capture the Flag Skyler received the SHOWTIME/TONY COX AWARD for BEST SHORT at the Nantucket Film Festival. As a screenwriter, Skyler has worked for producers such as Mike Figgis, John Penotti, Nellie Bellflower, Radical Media and Ramfis Myrthil.
Born and raised in New York City,Skyler is currently in postproduction on the doc series This Side of Midnight, about the post-Warhol generation artists of the 1980s Downtown New York nightclubs, for producer Erin Wright, and in development on several fiction projects. She has served on juries and selection committees for Sundance AFI, Aspen Film Fest, Provincetown and Film Independent, and is a member of The Loft Cinema Board of Directors.