Josef Steiff

Raised in rural Appalachia and a former licensed social worker, writer/filmmaker Josef Steiff creates work that reflects his interest in the ways that people struggle to make personal sense out of random, impersonal events; in addition his work includes nonfiction interests in popular culture.

Exhibiting in the United States, Europe and Asia, his films include the award-winning shorts "Borders," "Catching Fire," "Eclipse" and "I Like My Boyfriend Drunk" as well as the documentary, "How Will I Tell? Surviving Sexual Assault." For MBC Television, he line produced MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN A FLOWER, the first Korean feature-length film to deal openly with physical disabilities, and he has served as general crew on Michael Moore's ROGER & ME and Wendy Weinberg's Academy Award nominated documentary, "Beyond Imagining."

Besides writing and directing THE OTHER ONE (winner of 4 Indie Awards), his feature film work includes writing/directing the last installment of the Split Pillow experiment in collaborative filmmaking SoulMAID and producing RHAPSODY. 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" that reflects on his experience growing up and working in rural Appalachia.

Besides his six books, he has also contributed chapters to other editors' and authors' work, such as: "In the Eye of the Beholder [Perceptual Error in Michael Bay's Transformers]" in TRANSFORMERS AND PHILOSOPHY: MORE THAN MEETS THE MIND, edited by John Shook and Liz Stillwaggon Swan, "Mashups and Mixups: Pink Floyd as Cinema" in PINK FLOYD AND PHILOSOPHY: CAREFUL WITH THAT AXIOM, EUGENE, edited by George A. Reisch, and the "Foreword" to THE DIY FILMMAKER: LESSONS TO SURVIVING OUTSIDE HOLLYWOOD, written by Paul Peditto & Boris Wexler.

Steiff is currently a Professor in Cinema and Television Arts at Columbia College Chicago, regularly teaching screenwriting, directing, producing and cinema studies in the undergraduate and graduate programs.