Susan Orleans Rieder

Susan has a background in history and art. She holds an MA in Art History from the University of California, Berkeley, and has worked at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Harvard University Art Museums. Her research focused on the social context of late nineteenth-century French photography and posters. This work has helped inform Susan’s approach to visual narratives about multifaceted subjects in film. Her interest in oral histories began one summer, as a researcher in England, when she became intrigued by a collection of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century accounts of family life in the British Library. Her introduction to filmmaking began as a researcher for the art history filmmaker Judith Weschler. Susan is the producer/director of several feature-length documentaries including EXILE AND COMMUNITY and THE MAKING OF JOE WHEELER. Her current project is WHY WE DANCE, (working title).