Video/Filmography

Video/Filmography

“Susan Mogul has the uncanny ability to humanize technology and use it to capture extremely telling and often intimate insights into the world of her subjects. Her technique is not unlike that of a strong writer with an extremely sophisticated narrative style, alternating voices from first to third person. A truly unusual and innovative voice.” —Thomas Rhoads, Former Director, Santa Monica Museum of Art

Tell Me About Your Mother (2024, 38 min.)

Tell Me About Your Mother investigates matrilineal lineage, domesticity and creativity. Intimate and conversational, seven female artist friends and colleagues of mine – mostly boomers – recount their mother’s creative influence upon them.

The Pencil Test (2023, 2 min.)

The Pencil Test film, a companion to Susan Mogul’s book of the same name, documents Mogul’s history of exposing her breasts throughout her five-decade career. Mogul, who made a name for herself as a second wave Feminist artist, does not shy away from critical response to her naked breasts by film scholars, art critics, as well as her own mother.

Mogul Is Mobil Volume III Redux (1975/2022, 4 min.)

Looking like a 1970’s “Rosie the Riveter”, Mogul takes on the persona of an artist who makes a living posting billboards on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. “Redux” tackles a recurring theme throughout Mogul’s work – a female artist’s anxiety about fame, fortune, and survival in the art world.

  • Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2024
  • FarO, Lisbon Portugal, 2022
  • Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw Poland, 2022
  • Kunsthaus Graz, Graz Austria, 2022

Mom’s Move (2018, 25 min.)

“Mom’s Move” portrays the relationship between two artists:  an unconventional fifties housewife, and the filmmaker, her boomer feminist daughter. This intergenerational film about women and photography explores the tension between women’s private and public selves.

  • Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2024
  • Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw Poland, 2022
  • National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C, 2019
  • Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, 2019
  • Conney Conference on Jewish Arts, New York City, 2019
  • Visible Evidence, International Documentary Film Conference, Los Angeles, 2019
  • Kunsthochschule Kassel, Kassel, Germany, 2018
  • University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany, 2018

Susan Mogul’s Woman’s Building (2010, 9 min.)

Nobody likes you if they think you’re rude – you better act the way you should. But we didn’t. Telling it the way it was lived, Susan Mogul’s short film captures the energy, passion and radical spirit of the Los Angeles Woman’s Building (1973-1991), a groundbreaking center for women’s culture. Commissioned by the Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design.

  • Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2024
  • Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw Poland, 2022
  • KunstGarten Graz, Austria, 2016
  • Kino Xenix, Zurich, Switzerland, 2011
  • “Doin’ It In Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building”,
  • Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, 2011

Driving Men (2008, 68 min.)

“Mogul looks at the men in her life, starting with her tragic first love and ending with a road trip with a new boyfriend forty years later. The often funny video tackles sex, desire, loss, family and the twisted threads of identity, as Mogul ponders being single and fifty. As with all her work, though, Driving Men is very much about a woman with a video camera…Mogul does this with insight, humor and a willingness to stand naked-literally and metaphorically – so that rather than merely being a diary, Driving Men is finally about the challenge of crafting a life.” —Holly Willis, LA WEEKLY

  • Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2024
  • Kino Xenix, Zurich, Switzerland, 2011
  • Les spectacles du reel + Taiwan Focus, Taipei,Taiwan, 2010
  • Krakow International Film Festival, Poland, 2010
  • Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Japan, 2009
  • New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center, 2009
  • Doclisboa, Lisbon, Portugal, 2009
  • San Francisco Jewish Film Festival at Yerba Buena, 2009
  • Beldocs, Belgrade, Serbia, 2009
  • Nyon International Film Festival, Switzerland, 2008
  • LA Filmforum, Los Angeles, 2008
  • Kansas International Film Festival, 2008
  • Festival dei Popoli, Florence, Italy. 2008
  • India International Women’s Film Festival, New Dehli, Nominated Best Documentary, 2008

Sing, O Barren Woman (2000, 11 min.)

“Giving voice to ten women who chose not to have children, Mogul’s video simultaneously offers a hilarious and poignant meditation on all manner of life choices and the necessity of living with their consequences.” —David Pagel, Los Angeles Times

Part documentary, part music video, Barren Woman, satirizes and celebrates a taboo subject – voluntary childlessness. Funded by a COLA Fellowship, a grant that honors mid-career artists.

  • Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2024
  • Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw Poland, 2022
  • Videozone Interantional Video Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2004
  • Black Maria Film/Video Festival, Director’s Choice Citation, 2004
  • Stefan Stux Gallery, New York, New York, 2003
  • Nyon International Documentary Festival, Switzerland, 2001
  • Amascultura International Documentary Film Festival, Portugal, 2001
  • Life and Times, KCET, Los Angeles PBS, 2001
  • “COLA 2000”, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2000

I Stare at You and Dream (1997, 60 min.)

“Mogul has a talent for swiftly getting you interested in people about whom you know nothing – so interested that the hour you spend with them zooms by.” —Howard Rosenberg, Los Angeles Times

Tender and unflinching, four characters’ struggles, wounds and romantic entanglements are gradually revealed in the context of their everyday lives. Filmed in Mogul’s Highland Park neighborhood, a predominantly Latino area of Los Angeles. Produced in association with the Independent Television Service for public television with major funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

  • Visions du Reel International Film Festival, Switzerland, 2009
  • San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, 1999
  • National Public Television, 1998
  • Nyon International Documentary Festival, 1998
  • “Eye and Thou: Jewish Autobiography in Film and Video,”
  • University of Southern California, 1998
  • NY Expo of Short Film and Video,1998: Bronze Medal
  • International Women in the Director’s Chair Film Festival, 1998: Opening Night Film
  • KCET, Los Angeles PBS, 1997
  • Louisville Film and Video Festival, 1997: Juror’s Prize
  • Southern Circuit: a tour thru the South of exceptional filmmakers, 1997

Everyday Echo Street; A Summer Diary (1993, 30 min.)

“…something to cheer, at once loads of fun and the kind of intimate insider’s journey through a Los Angeles neighborhood that you seldom see on television… a highly personalized film threaded by the filmmaker’s self-effacing wit and candid introspection about her life as she settles into middle age.” —Howard Rosenberg, Los Angeles Times

An intimate insider’s view of how home and neighborhood are constructed in everyday relations. This diary/documentary redefines “family” in a modern urban setting. Funded by the Ford Foundation and commissioned by Peter Sellar’s Los Angeles Festival.

  • Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2024
  • Museum of Moving Image, New York City, NY 2019
  • Kino Xenix, Zurich, Switzerland, 2011
  • Visions du Reel International Film Festival, Switzerland, 2009
  • KCET, Los Angeles PBS, 1994 – 2000
  • 43rd Melbourne International Film Festival, 1994
  • AFI National Video Festival, 1994
  • LACE Videoannuale, 1994
  • Peter Sellar’s Los Angeles Festival, 1993

Prosaic Portraits, Ironies and Other Intimacies (1991, 46 min.)

A personal and idiosyncratic diary of Mogul’s eight week Eastern European journey in 1990. Prosaic Portraits anticipated “Everyday Echo Street” in its quest for home. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Santa Monica Museum’s “Artist’s Projects Series.” Premiered at the Santa Monica Museum of Art.

  • Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw Poland, 2022
  • Nyon International Film Festival, Switzerland, 2009
  • Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA, 1991

Five East (1990, 7 min. 33 sec)

As an artist-in residence for three months at Childrens Hospital, Los Angeles, Mogul produced a series of portraits of chronically ill adolescents. These children were in a section of the hospital known as Five East.

Dear Dennis (1988, 4 min.)

A videoletter to Dennis Hopper inspired by the fact that both Mogul and Hopper have the same dentist.

  • Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2024
  • Visions du Reel International Film Festival, Switzerland, 2009
  • “California Video”, Getty Museum, Los Angeles 2008
  • “Sunshine & Noir”, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 1998
  • Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy, 1998
  • Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Humleboek, Denmark, 1997
  • Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, Germany,1997
  • David Zwirner Gallery, New York City,1993
  • Studio Guenzani, Milan, Italy, 1993
  • LACE, “Annuale”, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 1989

The Last Jew in America (1984, 22 min.)

“Susan Mogul in ‘The Last Jew in America’ is giving Barbra Streisand – appearingin Yentl – some competition.” — L.A. Weekly

Part professor, part stand-up comic, Mogul gives a “history lesson” on the conflicts, contradictions, and often resulting absurdities of Jewish American assimilation.

  • Too Jewish?, Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1998
  • Too Jewish?, Jewish Museum, New York City, 1996
  • Broadcast on Group W Cable Network / Jewish Television Network Los Angeles, 1984

Waiting at the Soda Fountain (1980, 28 min.)

“Mogul’s success is due to her ability to combine message, mirth and myth.”  — Artweek

Funded by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation.

This performance video offers a humorous critique of Hollywood power relations. Mogul masquerades as a stereotypical male film director auditioning would-be starlets at a soda fountain–a parody of the rags-to-riches legend of Lana Turner’s “discovery” at Schwab’s drugstore. In over-the-top performances that poke fun at traditional female passivity, feminist artists including Arlene Raven, Cheri Gaulke and Nancy Angelo, enact the roles of pliant actresses-in-waiting who submit to the whims and sexist jabs of a dictatorial director. Balancing structure and improvisation, reality and artifice, the video is composed of footage shot during a three-hour on-location happening directed by Mogul.

  • “Provoking Change” Group Exhibition, 2017
  • University Art Gallery, UC San Diego La Jolla, CA
  • Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, 1980
  • Columbia Drugs, Hollywood, CA.1980

Big Tip/Back Up/Shut Out (1976, 10 min.)

“Her extroversion is so extreme that her story leaps from the vacuum around her, over the camera and off the screen entirely.”—Artforum 1976

Big Tip was my first work to grapple with the economics and anxiety of being an artist. I mull over what I might do if I don’t make it as an artist. “What if I lose my eyes?” I suggest a career as a stand-up comic is a safe bet, and try out a few jokes on an imagined audience.

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 2021
  • LA Filmforum, 2012
  • Southland Video Anthology, Long Beach Museum, 1977
  • Anthology Film Archive, NYC, 1976

Feminist Studio Workshop Videoletter (1975, 30 min.)

The Videoletter is an offbeat “tour” of the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. It includes interviews with Judy Chicago, Sheila De Bretteville, and Susan King. It was produced and directed by Susan Mogul, Pam MacDonald and Sheila Ruth, all active participants in the Feminist Studio Workshop and the Woman’s Building. The Los Angeles Woman’s Building was a groundbreaking center for women’s culture. The Videoletter was part of a videoletter exchange among feminist organizations in New York City, Chicago, and Washington DC. The exchange was short lived.

  • Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland, 2017
  • “Doin’ It In Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building”, Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, 2011
  • Woman’s Building, Los Angeles, 1975
  • Woman’s Interart Center, NYC, 1975

Take Off (1974, 10 min.)

“In ‘Take Off’ Mogul has struck a fine balance between the tellable and the untellable. Her most remarkable action, the use of her vibrator “in public” borders on being taboo (yet) is so ridiculous that ultimately “women’s polite language” is mocked as incisively as is Vito Acconci.” —Afterimage

“As bad as bad girl art today with the druggy stream of consciousness narrative that was so popular in post hippy post Vietnam art.” —Artweek

  • Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2024
  • Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw Poland, 2022
  • Visions du Reel International Film Festival, Switzerland, 2009
  • Blum and Poe Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2008
  • “History of the Disappearance,” Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England
  • “Made in California: Art, Image and Identity, 1900-2000,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 2000
  • Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy, 1998
  • “Sunshine & Noir”, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 1998
  • Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Humleboek, Denmark, 1997
  • Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, 1997
  • National Video Festival, American Film Institute, Los Angeles, 1985
  • David Zwirner Gallery, New York City, 1993
  • Studio Guenzani, Milan, Italy, 1993
  • Anthology Film Archive, New York City, 1976
  • de Appel Gallery, Amsterdam, 1976
  • “Scratching the Belly of the Beast: Cutting Edge Media in Los Angeles 1922-94,” 1994
  • “Southland Video Anthology,” Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA, 1975

Dressing Up (1973, 7 min.)

“(Dressing Up is one of) Susan Mogul’s very funny video stories, in which she proceeds from disrobed to robed, reminiscing about the history of each item of clothing.” —Lucy Lippard, “From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art”

  • Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2024
  • Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw Poland, 2020 and 2022
  • Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China, 2021
  • Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2018
  • Channels Festival, Brunswick, Australia, 2013
  • Visions du Reel International Film Festival, Switzerland, 2009
  • “California Video”, Getty Museum, Los Angeles 2008
  • Centre Pompidou, Paris, “Los Angeles 1955-1985: Birth of an Art Capital”, 2006
  • Museum of Modern Art, New York City, “Tomorrowland”, 2006
  • Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy, 1998
  • Le Magasin Centre National d’art Contemporain de Grenoble, France, 1997
  • Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Humleboek, Denmark, 1997
  • Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, 1997
  • “Scratching the Belly of the Beast: Cutting Edge Media in Los Angeles 1922-94”, 1994
  • “Lost and Found: Twenty Years of Video Art at the Long Beach Museum of Art”, 1994
  • David Zwirner Gallery, New York City, 1993
  • Studio Guenzani, Milan, Italy, 1993
  • American Cultural Center, Paris, France,1980
  • Anthology Film Archive, New York City, 1976
  • The Kitchen, New York City, 1973
  • New York City Women’s Video Festival, 1973

Laurel and Susan (1973, 3 min.)

My feminist art pal Laurel Klick is behind the camera as I recount my one-sided flirtation with a guy who worked at CalArts in the equipment “cage”, the place where I borrowed the Portapak to make this video.

Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw Poland, 2022

ADDITIONAL WORKS (1991–2002)

Sweet Talkin Guy (2002, 2 min.)

A humorous autobiographical music video composed from footage of men from Mogul’s video archive. Commissioned by LA Freewaves for closing night at a Los Angeles karaoke bar in Koreatown, October 2002.

Piece of Work (2001, 6 min.)

Ken Mate, a 56 year old solipsistic individual, recites Finnegan’s Wake while doing sit-ups, talks about talking, and kvetches when a neighbor “steals” the first tomato from his hand-cultivated garden. Drawn from the inside out, this portrait describes who Ken is rather than describing what he does. Commissioned by and presented at the Second Annual Silver Lake Film Festival, 2001.

Home Safe Home (1997, 6 min.)

Ensconced in her urban Los Angeles bed, Mogul recounts growing up “safe” on suburban Long Island. Commissioned by and co-produced with KCET, Los Angeles PBS station, for their daily magazine program Life and Times.
Also presented at The Jewish Museum, “Moving Portraits” NYC, NY, 2000

We Draw – You Video (1991, 26 min.)

“These images steadfastly resist our habitual – and dangerously comforting – sentimentalization of childhood. And for this, for her insistence upon these children’s idiosyncratic responses (black humor, desperate rage, deadpan acceptance) to the often brute facts of their existence, Mogul is to be commended.” – Los Angeles Times

Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Inter-Arts Program.
Presented at LACE, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 1991