Ben Lenzner

Bank Street School for Children '94

[Bank Street] provided me with an educational experience that made me want to spend my life exploring the world, want to spend my life examining the ways in which people live, examine the ways in which people express themselves, tell their stories as a documentary filmmaker, as an artist.

Ben Lenzner, SFC ’94, is an artist, filmmaker, storyteller, photographer, documentary media maker, writer, and scholar in the study of screen and media. With an MFA in Documentary Media from Ryerson University (Canada) and a PhD in Screen & Media Studies from the University of Waikato (New Zealand), Ben’s work provides new angles and unique vantage points for documentary storytelling. A true believer that art & collaboration can bring communities together, his recent films, creative experiments, exploratory research, approaches to storytelling, video installations, and activist projects have examined citizen journalism in the Kashmir Valley, emerging global artistry in the city of Pune, Maharashtra, the annual migration of the Van Gujjar community of Northern India, and the relationship between communities and refugees on the Italian/French border. Clients include The Guardian, the 360Plus Leadership Collective, and the visual artist Krishnaswamy, and his creative projects have screened at The Barbican, Anthology Film Archives, Ryerson Image Centre, and Nuit Blanche Toronto, amongst many others. He has taught lens-based media in the community programs department of the International Center of Photography (ICP), as well as at both Carleton College & Iona College. Ben lives in New York City.