Patricia Gruben

Patricia Gruben is an American born filmmaker who currently teaches film studies at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. In her career, she has been involved with three feature films and a number of shorts. Gruben has worked in many different positions within the film industry, from being property master to directing a feature film. In 2015, Gruben was the recipient of the Teamsters 155 Woman of the Year Award.

Biography

Gruben was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1947. She attended Rice University where she studied anthropology. Gruben went on to attend the University of Texas where she studied film. After completing her graduate studies, she moved to Toronto in the early 1970s. Over the following years Gruben worked in different fields of the film industry, from commercials to productions designed for children. Over the course of her career, she has worked as a director, an editor, an assistant director, a cinematographer, a props assistant, an art director, a writer, a set decorator and a producer.

Career

Her first film, The Central Character (1979), was a short. The Women’s Companion to International Film, edited by Annette Kuhn and Susannah Radstone, states that this short "received immediate attention as the work of a major new figure in Canada’s Avant Garde." Gruben went on to make another experimental short, Sifted Evidence (1982), which received international attention from film festival screenings.

Gruben worked as a set decorator for Spasms (1982), a horror film directed by William Fruet, before working her first feature film. Gruben wrote and directed Low Visibility (1984), which told the story of a man who had lost his ability to communicate and his memory. Gruben also wrote and directed Deep Sleep (1990), and directed Ley Lines (1993). Ley Lines is an autobiographical documentary based on Gruben’s family tree, where she follows her lineage from America to Germany and Canada.

Gruben began to teach at Simon Fraser University in 1984. Three years later, in 1987, Gruben and Colin Browne founded the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters. The program was part of the Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, which received funding from both the government of British Columbia and the university. The purpose of the program was to assist Canadian screenwriters by providing the opportunity to work with professionals in the industry. In 2013, a Globe and Mail article announced that the program would end in 2014 due to lack of funding. The program will be leaving the university in 2015. Gruben is currently an associate professor at Simon Fraser University and specializes in Indian cinema.

For 2015, Gruben is serving as a judge for the Daryl Duke Prize. The prize of $25,000 is offered by the Daryl Duke Foundation to assist a screenwriter in producing their screenplay. The prize is offered in memory of Daryl Duke.

Awards

Gruben received the Teamsters 155 Woman of the Year Award in 2015 from Women in Film and Television, a non-for-profit organization that hosts the awards. Women in Film and Television Vancouver defined the criteria for the award in the 2015 Spotlight Award Winners section of its website. The award requires that the recipient be "a woman who has achieved a significant success in the field of film or television, and who is recognized for mentoring other women in the industry."

Filmography

• The Central Character (1979)
• Sifted Evidence (1982)
• Spasms (1982), alternate title Death Bites
• Low Visibility (1984)
• Determinations (1988)
• Deep Sleep (1990)
• Ley Lines (1993)
• Before it Blows (1997)