Location: Albany, CA
Medium: Film, Video, Installation, Social Practice
Website: thirtyleaves.org
Helen De Michiel (born November 28, 1953) is a filmmaker, media artist, author, and educator based in Albany, California. She began her career as a producer at Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) in Minneapolis from 1985 to 1990, working on PBS series including Alive From Off Center and The Independents — early showcases for independent and experimental media. She later served as National Director of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) from 1996 to 2010, a pivotal role in shaping the infrastructure of the U.S. media arts field. She founded Thirty Leaves Production and has taught in the Film Program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Her feature narrative Tarantella (1995), a dramatic film starring Mira Sorvino exploring Italian-American family history and identity, toured festivals internationally before broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens in 1997. Her documentary Turn Here Sweet Corn (1990) aired on PBS’s POV series in 1993. De Michiel has received a Rockefeller Intercultural Film/Video Fellowship, a Bush Foundation Fellowship, and multiple NEA awards. Her video essay Consider Anything, Only Don’t Cry (1988) won the “Best New Vision” Golden Gate Award at the 1989 San Francisco International Film Festival and entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Listening Project (1994), created as artist-in-residence at the Walker Art Center, also entered that institution’s permanent collection and received the 1995 “Muse” Award in New Media & Technology from the American Museum Association. She served on the Board of the George F. Peabody Awards for Electronic Media from 2001 to 2007.
De Michiel’s practice spans narrative film, documentary, participatory media installation, and transmedia storytelling. She has developed what she calls “open space” new media documentary — an approach in which audiences become active participants in the unfolding of a story rather than passive viewers. Her work consistently explores the intersection of individual lives with social movements: food justice, community organizing, gender equity in technology, and the role of art in civic life. She co-authored Open Space New Media Documentary: A Toolkit for Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2018) with film historian Patricia Zimmermann, codifying these practices for the broader documentary field.
Her installations bring the same participatory spirit into museum and gallery contexts. The Listening Project (1994), made as artist-in-residence at the Walker Art Center, invited fifteen high school students to reflect on contemporary art as a tool for self-discovery, producing an 18-minute hybrid video work. Paying Attention (2003), created as artist-in-residence at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, is a 26-minute two-screen installation exploring the urban landscape through the senses of young artists and scientists. Across all formats, De Michiel foregrounds community voice, collaborative process, and the documentary form’s capacity to catalyze public dialogue.
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