Emerald City

Josef (Joe) Steiff is an independent filmmaker and writer whose work has exhibited in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Growing up in rural Appalachia, he doesn’t talk with much of a drawl unless he’s really tired — or you’ve bought him that second shot of whiskey — because his family said it would make people think he was uneducated. As a former licensed social worker, he creates work that reflects his interest in the ways that people struggle to make personal sense out of random, impersonal events. Feature films like The Other One (writer/director) and More Beautiful Than a Flower (producer), as well as his shorts “Jesse James,” “Emerald City,” “Borders,” “Catching Fire,” “I Like My Boyfriend Drunk,” and “How Will I Tell? Surviving Sexual Assault,” reflect on social issues. He served as general crew on Michael Moore’s Roger & Me and Wendy Weinberg’s Academy Award nominated documentary, Beyond Imagining. He contributed a sound installation to the first major art exhibition regarding HIV in the United States, “AIDS: The Artists’ Response,” and is the writer/performer of the critically acclaimed one-man show Golden Corral about his experiences growing up and working in rural Appalachia. His publications include “To Lose My Mind and Save My Soul: The Masculine and Feminine in Films Set in the Forest” in Cuaderno No. 91 The Heroine’s Path in Film and Other Narratives and an essay about gay domestic violence, “Flashpoint,” in Hinterland. In addition he has written or co-written three books on aspects of filmmaking and edited several books on popular culture, including topics such as anime, manga, Sherlock Holmes, and the TV series Battlestar Galactica.