Philip Brubaker
Known for Directing
Philip Brubaker is a filmmaker who works in non-fiction, experimental and hybrid genres. When he was sixteen, he created Squish Story (1996) an epic documentary about his friend Nate Weida, who wrote and staged an original high school musical. The film worked in homages to Kubrick, Scorsese and other directors Brubaker admired, which would foretell his future video essay work.
Brubaker's breakthrough documentary on the film festival circuit was The National Hollerin' Contest (2003) about the peculiar North Carolina tradition. Brubaker filmed Brushes With Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness (2009) an advocacy documentary that featured frank interviews with several artists who live with diagnoses like schizophrenia, bipolar, borderline personality disorder. That film won a couple of industry awards and Brubaker received a grant from Eli Lilly for his positive and stigma-busting depiction of people who many have dismissed as 'crazy.'
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Brubaker was a member of the first class of students in Duke University's breakthrough graduate program in Experimental and Documentary Arts in 2011-2013. In 2016, Brubaker began a partnership with the streaming service Fandor, which resulted in the publication of more than 100 video essays Brubaker created over a two-year period.