Sierra Pettengill
An oral history of Artists Space, the legendary New York artists organization. Told through the voices of the artists, critics and curators who formed it, the film is narrated by voiceover culled from 30 hours of archival cassette tape interviews over a 45 year period. Artists such as Laurie Anderson, Mike Kelley, Hito Steyerl and David Wojnarowicz walk us through the decades. A formally-experimental and raucously-told chronology composed of rare archival documentation, The Business of Thought... is a reminder of the radical potential of the arts and the importance of collective, cultural spaces.
Sierra Pettengill’s archival films explore the haunting of America’s present by its past. Her new short, The Rifleman (2020, 18 min), is an all-archival excavation of the links between gun culture, the National Rifle Association, and the U.S. Border Patrol across five decades.
Comprised entirely of archival footage taken during those pre-reality-television years, The Reagan Show looks at how Ronald Reagan redefined the look and feel of what it means to be the POTUS.
Using over 100 years of archival footage, director Sierra Pettengill explores the history of the largest Confederate monument, Georgia’s Stone Mountain.
This film uses the Reagan administration's internal documentation to capture the surreal spectacle of American might at its apex.
From PBS and American Experience - The Triangle Fire chronicles the fire that tore through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City killing one hundred and forty-eight young women and forever changed the relationship between labor and industry in the United States.
BAD BLOOD chronicles how a "miracle" treatment for hemophilia became an agent of death for 10,000 Americans.
This American Experience tells Whitman's life story, from his working-class childhood in Long Island, to his years as a newspaper reporter in Brooklyn when he struggled to support his impoverished family, then to his reckless pursuit of the attention and affection he craved for his work, to his death in 1892.
Riotsville, USA is an archival documentary about the U.S. military’s response to the political and racial injustices of the late 1960s: take a military base, build a mock inner-city set, cast soldiers to play rioters, burn the place down, and film it all.
An all-archival excavation of the links between gun culture, the National Rifle Association, and the U.S. Border Patrol across five decades.
