Profile
Leo听Goldsmith听is a writer, critic, and curator, whose research takes a transdisciplinary approach to experimental nonfiction forms in moving-image media.
He is an Assistant听Professor of Culture and Media at Eugene Lang College, 麻豆传媒色情片, where he teaches courses in Screen Studies, and has lectured on media, film, and art history at CUNY/Brooklyn College, New York University, and Harvard University. His critical writing appears in听4 Columns, e-flux, Cinema Scope, and听The Brooklyn Rail, where he was film editor from 2011 to 2018. He听is听a co-author of听Keywords in Subversive Film/Media Aesthetics听(Wiley 2015), by Robert Stam with Richard Porton, and听is听currently writing a book about the filmmaker Peter Watkins (Verso). He听is听a programming advisor to the selection committee of the New York Film Festival.
Degrees Held
Ph.D.,听New York University, Department of Cinema Studies (2018);听Dissertation: 鈥淔ragmented Screens: Found Footage and Image Circulation.鈥
Recent Publications
Books
Distant Present: The Radical Art and Ideas of Peter Watkins (Verso; under contract); awarded the Art Writers Grant (Book) from Creative Capital/The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Keywords in Subversive Film/Media Aesthetics, by Robert Stam with Richard Porton and Leo Goldsmith (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)
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Book Chapters
鈥淭he Artists鈥 Hands: Tactility and Telepathy in Gianikian & Ricci Lucchi鈥檚 Films鈥 in Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi at Work, ed. Alo Paistik and Jonathan Larcher. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming 2025)
鈥淎 Big Ball of Concrete: On Sound in the Work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul鈥 in HOMES鈥 Apichatpong Weerastehakul, ed. Antoine Thirion. (Montreuil, France: Les E虂ditions de l'艗il, forthcoming 2024)
鈥淯nderground Cinemas: Histories and Futures鈥 in Under the Ground / Imaginaries for the Subterranean Worlds, ed. Hugo de Almeida Pinho. (Berlin: Archive Books, forthcoming 2024)
鈥淚ns and Outtakes鈥 (with Peggy Ahwesh) in Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film, ed. Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2023) Winner of the SCMS Best Edited Collection Award.
鈥淪tratman鈥檚 Sonic Subscapes鈥 in Geologic Listening, ed. Sukhdev Sandhu and Deborah Stratman. (New York: UnionDocs/Texte und To虉ne, 2023)
鈥淕hostly Matter: Filipa Ce虂sar鈥檚 Films and Videos鈥 in Reframing Portuguese Cinema in the 21st Century, Volume 1, ed. Daniel Ribas & Paulo Cunha. (Lisbon: agenda, 2020), 197-208.
鈥淭he Desertification of Discourse: Punishment Park鈥 (with Rachael Rakes) in Outsider Films on America, ed. Shanay Jhaveri. (Huddinge, Sweden: The Shoestring Publisher, 2019)
鈥淭he Body is a Fact鈥 in Vale虂rie Massadian, ed. Maura Edmond and John Edmond. (Brisbane, Australia: Queensland Film Festival, 2019)
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Journal Essays
鈥淪ci-Fi-Doc: Intersections and Hybridizations of the Speculative & the Non-fictional,鈥 Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (Spring 2025), In Focus section and introduction co-edited with Benjami虂n Schultz-Figueroa.
鈥淭heories of the Earth: Surface and Extraction in Landscape Documentary,鈥 World Records (Fall 2018): https://vols.worldrecordsjournal.org/#/02/05
鈥淧eter Watkins鈥檚 Futuresports,鈥 INCITE: Journal of Experimental Media 7-8 (2016-2017). Co- authored with Rachael Rakes.
鈥淯ncertain Spaces (introduction),鈥 fireflies 5: Angela Schanelec (2017), 8-15.
鈥淎 MOVIE BY...: Appropriation, Authorship, and the Ecologies of the Moving Image,鈥 First听Monday (November 2016).
"Scratch's Third Body: Video Talks Back to Television,鈥 VIEW: Journal of European Television听History and Culture 4.8 (Fall 2015).
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Recent Critical Writing
2025
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"Afternoons of Solitude," 4Columns
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鈥淧ixel Visions: Dogme 95 and the Emergence of Digital Cinema,鈥 The Criterion Collection
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"The Journey," Screen Slate
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"Caught By the Tides," 4Columns
2024
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鈥淭he Ongoing Revolution in Portuguese Cinema,鈥 4Columns
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鈥淭he Meg: Megalopolis,鈥 Film Comment
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鈥淗arun Farocki: The Inextinguishable Fire,鈥 e-flux
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鈥淓vil Does Not Exist,鈥 4Columns
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鈥淐onceived in Liberty: Civil War,鈥 Film Comment
2023
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鈥淔errari,鈥 4Columns
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鈥淭he Best Short Films of 2023,鈥 Film Comment
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鈥淧rismatic Ground 2023,鈥 e-flux
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鈥淏lack Gold: Dry Ground Burning,鈥 Film Comment
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鈥淏eau Is Afraid,鈥 4Columns
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鈥淪pace Ways: 2023 Cosmic Rays Film Festival,鈥 Film Comment
2022
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鈥淭own & Country: Riotsville, USA,鈥 ArtForum
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鈥淚mage, Sound, and Silence: Temenos 2022,鈥 Film Comment
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鈥淎hed鈥檚 Knee,鈥 4Columns
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鈥淛eppe Hein鈥檚 2-Dimensional Mirror Labyrinth (2006),鈥 at dawn exhibition catalog,听Julia Stoschek Collection
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鈥淚t Hurts Me Too: Claire Denis鈥檚 Both Sides of the Blade,鈥 Film Comment
2021
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鈥淪cenes From a Marriage,鈥 4Columns
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鈥淎ll Light, Everywhere,鈥 4Columns
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鈥淟abyrinth of Passion: Just Don鈥檛 Think I鈥檒l Scream,鈥 Reverse Shot
2020
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鈥淏acurau,鈥 4Columns
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鈥淭ime and Tide: Jon Rubin's Floating Cinema Project,鈥 In Media Res
2019
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Catalog Contributor, Whitney Biennial 2019, Whitney Museum of American Art 鈥淧rison Images,鈥 4Columns
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鈥淐ici Wu鈥檚 鈥楿nfinished Return,鈥欌 art-agenda
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鈥淒emocratic Duty: Kevin Jerome Everson鈥檚 Tonsler Park,鈥 Vertical Features
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鈥淭ransit,鈥 4Columns
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Performances and Appearances
FILM PRODUCTION
Archival Producer, The Universe in a Grain of Sand, dir. Mark Levinson (2024)
Technical Consultant, Ad Astra, dir. James Gray (2019)
Assistant Producer, The Lord God Bird, dir. George Butler (2008)
Assistant Producer, One Heartbeat: Bobby Bowden and the Florida State Seminoles, dir. George Butler (2008)
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Research Interests
Contemporary global cinema,听experimental non-fiction cinema, remix/appropriation, film festivals, film criticism, sound theory/practice, ethnography, American cinema, computation and the moving image.