About Lenn Keller

For as long as I can remember, I have loved the arts, and my own personal creative expression has evolved to center around music, photography and film. Music was my very first love, and both the listening and making of it has seen me through some of the most challenging periods of my life. By age eight, photography had also made an indelible impression on me, and I remember spending endless hours laying on the living room floor poring over Life magazine. Looking at beautiful black and white images stimulated my intellect, emotions, and my natural wonder about other people of other cultures, and a desire to reach beyond borders. As a teen I ran away from my suburban Chicago home, and was adopted by a black artists' collective in Harlem. It was there that I had my first exposure to traditional black and white darkroom photography. Years later, my formal study of photography would begin in 1981, and I began exhibiting in 1982, graduating from Mills College with a B.A. in Visual Communication in 1984.

My first exposure to the independent filmmaking community was also in New York as a teenager. In 1985 I had the opportunity to be a still photographer on a low-budget feature shot in San Francisco. During the 1990's, I became more involved with filmmaking, and had the opportunity to function in a number of different roles; Assistant Director, Script Supervisor, Stills Photographer, and Production Assistant on a several Hollywood features, indie productions, and a television series.

In 1993, I wrote, produced, directed, and shot my first short film, Ifé, in 16mm B&W and won an audience favorite award at the Madrid Women's International Film Festival in 1994. In 1995, I wrote, directed and produced my second film, Sightings, in 16mm color. In 2001, I began producing and directing a feature length documentary entitled, A Persistent Desire, which is about a fascinating and subversive lesbian archetypal sub-culture of sexual and gender renegades. Commonly known as butch/femme, it is a culture that emerged visibly in the 1940s and endures to the present.

If you are interested in the process of producing a "low-budget" short film, check out the diaristic essay I wrote called Make Your Own, which is based on my journals from making Ifé and Sightings. The essay was originally published in Femme Flicke (now out of publication), and was recently re-published in The Ms. Films DIY Guide to Film & Video in 2007.

My most fulfilling creative project thus far has been raising my daughter as a single mother. She's all grown up now -- smart as a whip, gorgeous, funny as can be, and is without a doubt one of the most incredible women I know -- a very talented writer, slam poet and actress.

I'm also a musicphile and an aspiring producer (with very eclectic taste); a self-taught musician (flute and sax), and an amateur DJ when I have the opportunity.

me back in the day on the baritone sax

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