
Directing
Eric Leiser
Los Angeles, U.S.A
Eric Leiser is an award-winning artist, experimental filmmaker, animator, holographer, puppeteer, writer, and former funeral director working in New York and born in California. An alumni of CalArt’s Experimental Animation program and the Fine Art program, Eric creates animated and live action feature films and shorts as well as intricate works integrating animation, puppetry, painting, holography, live performance and installation. Eric has made 4 feature films to date, Faustbook, Imagination, Glitch in the Grid and Apocalypsis. The upcoming 5th animated feature film Twilight Park is in production. Along with feature films, 70 short films ranging from 1997 to present, mostly compose the artist's filmography. Eric's brother and frequent collaborator Jeffrey Leiser created the music and sound design for the four features and 70 short films with a few exceptions. The Leiser Brothers share the writing credits for feature films Imagination and Twilight Park with the addition of collaborator Maude Swift. Eric is also a well known holographer and fine artist, a plethora of books on contemporary art, animation and physics/optics have included chapters on the artist's work. Eric's work is part of the permanent collection of the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, NL and over 50 film collections worldwide including fine artworks. Recent solo exhibitions include Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Binálé Video Art Biennial in Budapest, Roswell Museum in Roswell, NM, Centro Multimeios Museum and Planetarium in Porto, Filmhuis Cavia in Amsterdam, the Horse Hospital in London, Holocenter Museum in New York, Exploratorium Museum and Shapeshifters Cinema in the Bay Area, Galerie du Haut Pave Gallery in Paris, Galerie Entropia in Poland, Fringe Exhibitions Gallery and MaRS Gallery in Los Angeles, Sound of MU Gallery in Oslo, Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and Goldsmiths, University of London. Group exhibitions include The Whitney Museum of American Art, Katrupgårdsamlingen Museum in Copenhagen, Mass MOCA, The MIT Museum, MOMus Museum in Thessaloniki, The Ruben H. Fleet Space Museum, Art MûR Gallery, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, Cabinet Magazine among others. His animated/live action films have been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the MIT Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Museum of Modern Art Antwerp, The Istanbul Modern Museum of Art, MOMus Museum, MASS MoCA, Four-Dimensions Space Art Museum Beijing, Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas Museum de Buenos Aires, Roswell Museum, Aster Arts Plaza Hiroshima, The Wexner Center, (BFI) British Film Institute, Anthology Film Archives, Los Angeles Filmforum, Shapeshifters Cinema, No Name Cinema, San Francisco Film Society, Oxford University, Goldsmiths-University of London, Royal College of Art, Harvard University, California Institute of the Arts, The Art Institute in Chicago, The New School, Pratt Institute and the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing. Select film festivals include the Cannes Film Festival, Annecy International Animation Festival, Hiroshima International Animation Festival and the Cinanima Animation Festival. .
Acting credits
NREric Leiser displays his boundless creativity in this short collection; A stunning compilation of works presented with a mixture of live action, stop motion animation, puppetry and pixilation techniques, produced between 2001 and 2006.
Eclectic Shorts by Eric Leiser
2006
5.0Dr. Reineger, a famous neuro-psychologist, has become convinced that a twin girl named Anna has a rare form of Autism called Asperger's Syndrome, rendering her unable to cope with reality. As for her blind sister, Sarah, the doctor cannot say for sure why her imaginary visions map so close to Anna's. At home, unable to face reality, their father leaves the family. To escape the pain, the girls sink deeper and deeper into their imagination. When a major earthquake takes their mother's life, Reineger gets more involved with helping the now-orphaned twins, while struggling with his realization that the girls seem to be capable of prophetic visions. The girls escape the doctor's institution and a subsequent search finds no trace of them. Have they transcended the physical realm? A mixture of live action, stop motion animation and other techniques makes this film a fantastic journey into the realm of imagination.
Imagination
2007
NRSeraphim Cloud is born during a winter cyclone storm
BIRTH
2015
NRA personal experimental exploration of the book of Psalms in the Holy Bible
Psalms
2003
7.2A troubled mortician embarks on an odyssey for truth about life and death.
Faustbook
2006
NRa short film from a decade back.. starring jeffrey and eric leiser ~ filmed and edited by jay masonek
Vampire
1999
7.5The protagonist feels dead in waking life and alive in dreams.
Dreamer
1999
7.8Three artists struggling against the grid of society find spiritual renewal.
Glitch in the Grid
2011
Behind the camera
7.0an unforgettable journey across the Icelandic landscape as mixing live action and pixilation to produce an enchanting, timeless short film. Shot on Kodachrome Super 8mm in western, northern, eastern and southen Iceland including interior Iceland in late summer 2004. Dedicated to Buddy King Leiser.
Iceland
2004
7.0A Romany woman travels from Praha to her home in Transylvania
Beyond the Forest
2006
7.5A bear arrives from Japan to live within an artist's studio in New York
Ghost Stay
2025
5.6Set in a parallel universe entering a black hole, a woman reading the book of Revelation has visions of regeneration during Anthropocene.
Apocalypsis
2018
5.6Set in a parallel universe entering a black hole, a woman reading the book of Revelation has visions of regeneration during Anthropocene.
Apocalypsis
2018
NRTwilight Park, a life size stop motion animated feature film about a boy Seraphim who along with Howie Heehaw; a rodeo show clown from Tibet, gets the chance to enter his narcoleptic/dementia addled Grandpa's mind and live out his past memories in order to save him.
Twilight Park
—
NRTwilight Park, a life size stop motion animated feature film about a boy Seraphim who along with Howie Heehaw; a rodeo show clown from Tibet, gets the chance to enter his narcoleptic/dementia addled Grandpa's mind and live out his past memories in order to save him.
Twilight Park
—
NREric Leiser displays his boundless creativity in this short collection; A stunning compilation of works presented with a mixture of live action, stop motion animation, puppetry and pixilation techniques, produced between 2001 and 2006.
Eclectic Shorts by Eric Leiser
2006
5.0a woman sheds psychological masks in order to face death before resurrecting
Schism
2003
5.0John 4:13-14: Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life
Living Waters
2012
NRa stop motion journey into the womb
Womb
2007
NRSeraphim journeys to Alaska, the most beautiful place in this child's mind's eye.
Alaska
2026
5.0Dr. Reineger, a famous neuro-psychologist, has become convinced that a twin girl named Anna has a rare form of Autism called Asperger's Syndrome, rendering her unable to cope with reality. As for her blind sister, Sarah, the doctor cannot say for sure why her imaginary visions map so close to Anna's. At home, unable to face reality, their father leaves the family. To escape the pain, the girls sink deeper and deeper into their imagination. When a major earthquake takes their mother's life, Reineger gets more involved with helping the now-orphaned twins, while struggling with his realization that the girls seem to be capable of prophetic visions. The girls escape the doctor's institution and a subsequent search finds no trace of them. Have they transcended the physical realm? A mixture of live action, stop motion animation and other techniques makes this film a fantastic journey into the realm of imagination.
Imagination
2007
5.0Dr. Reineger, a famous neuro-psychologist, has become convinced that a twin girl named Anna has a rare form of Autism called Asperger's Syndrome, rendering her unable to cope with reality. As for her blind sister, Sarah, the doctor cannot say for sure why her imaginary visions map so close to Anna's. At home, unable to face reality, their father leaves the family. To escape the pain, the girls sink deeper and deeper into their imagination. When a major earthquake takes their mother's life, Reineger gets more involved with helping the now-orphaned twins, while struggling with his realization that the girls seem to be capable of prophetic visions. The girls escape the doctor's institution and a subsequent search finds no trace of them. Have they transcended the physical realm? A mixture of live action, stop motion animation and other techniques makes this film a fantastic journey into the realm of imagination.
Imagination
2007
6.0arc of the natural world’s evolution from the primeval environment to the Anthropocene and back again premiered in program Death is Green at the Whitney Museum of American Art part of Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art 1905-2016 organized by Chrissie Iles
Anthropic Principle
2016
4.0Seraphim visits a bell foundry and learns how to cast Sevenik Sevenicius the largest bell in the world.
The Bell Foundry
2024
6.0mysteries of the sea are revealed before 4am. shot in Hastings, England in 2008
Hastings Conqueror
2010
6.0a melancholic dream reveals Eternity
Maelstrom
2010
NRSeraphim Cloud is born during a winter cyclone storm
BIRTH
2015
NRA personal experimental exploration of the book of Psalms in the Holy Bible
Psalms
2003
NRA personal experimental exploration of the book of Psalms in the Holy Bible
Psalms
2003
8.0protagonist hoping to be taken in dreams into the hereafter falls in love with a person who is indifferent. Suffering heartbreak after confessing love, the protagonist drives to the California redwoods and dies while dreaming.
Dream
2000
8.0Regeneration is a film about transformation. Starting in a dark place the character reaches toward the divine and breaks into the world of the spirit. Through this act representing an outstretched hand we see that the Holy Spirit represented as a dove is pursuing us even more urgently. The meeting of the two represents the freedom in flight found in trusting fully in the Holy Spirit and is completed with the return to the heart now fully regenerated.
Regeneration
2009
9.0Resulting from an ancient volcanic eruption, revered as sacred by the Chalun and Matsun Native American Tribes as the home of the Firebird/Thunderbird (California Condor) a supernatural being of power and strength. Pinnacles represents transcendent moments, spiritual guidance and forging new timelines within interpersonal landscapes.
Pinnacles
2022