Born in Minneapolis, Jake Yuzna is cultural producer whose work focuses on identity and the other and has included films, performance, curation, design, publications, nightlife, and educational initiatives. The youngest recipient of a filmmaking grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, their work has been presented at the Cannes Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, London Film Festival, and over 100 additional film festivals, as well as broadcast throughout the United States and Europe. Yuzna’s debut feature, Open, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, where it became the first American feature to receive the Teddy Jury Prize before being awarded additional prizes at the Tel Aviv Film Festival, NewFest, and OutFest. Yuzna has also been recognized with grants and awards from the American Film Institute, McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Frameline Foundation, Philanthrofund Foundation, as well as a special jury award for “artistic risktaking” from IFP. In addition, their work has been presented at the New Museum, C/O in Berlin, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and Strekla in Moscow. In 2010, Yuzna became the first cinema curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. During this time, they curated the first American retrospectives of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Dario Argento, Gregg Araki, Dogme 95, and the medium of VHS. This work was collected by the library at Yale University. They are the author of the books THE FUN: The Social Practice of Nightlife in NYC and NYC Makers. From 2019-2020 they were the Fulbright Research Fellow at the Center for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana were their work focused on the history of collaborative film and performance practices in the former Yugoslavia.