Susan Kerns

About Susan Kerns

Dr. Susan Kerns is the Executive Director of Milwaukee Film and Professor Emeritus of Film and Television at Columbia College Chicago. She has been working with film festivals since volunteering for SXSW in the 1990s, including being Milwaukee Film’s first Education Director in the 2010s before becoming a film professor. Her book ReFocus: The Films of Susan Seidelman (2023) is the first scholarly volume devoted to the groundbreaking filmmaker. She has also written liner notes for the Eureka! Tank Girl box set and published extensively in areas including disability in film, conjoined twins, comic book adaptations, and the film festival landscape. She has worked in film acquisition and programmed or juried festivals around the world, including co-founding the Chicago Feminist Film Festival, while presenting on film festivals and distribution at SXSW, Art House Convergence, European Network for Cinema and Media Studies, University Film and Video Association, and others. She is currently producing the 16mm horror feature Communicable, the feminist true crime documentary Uncoiled, and the VR experience Scapegoat. She holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.