The University of Texas at Austin, Master of Fine Arts, Radio-Television-Film
The Pennsylvania State University, Master of Science, Geography
Carleton College, Bachelor of Arts, Liberal Arts (Geology)

John Fiege is a filmmaker and photographer whose work explores our relationships with one
another and the environment, probing key questions at the heart of our global ecological
crisis, including how art, activism, community, and culture are vitally linked to our ecological
predicament. The animating question of his work is: how do we protect life on Earth and live
peacefully with one another, across difference?

His films have played at festivals, museums, universities, conferences, and community centers
around the world and received distribution on iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Sundance Now,
and other platforms. He has received numerous fellowships, grants, and residencies, including
from Doc Society, The Redford Center, University at Buffalo’s Humanities Institute, United
University Professions, Austin Film Society, Propel Capital, Film Society of Lincoln Center,
Houston Endowment, Carleton College, Princess Grace Foundation, The University of Texas,
University Film and Video Association, Kodak, and Smithsonian Institution. Above All Else is his
feature-length documentary about the Keystone XL pipeline that premiered at the SXSW Film
Festival, with an international premiere at Hot Docs. The film won Best North American
Documentary at the Global Visions Festival and a Special Jury Prize at the Dallas International
Film Festival. Mississippi Chicken, his intimate portrait of immigrants working in the poultry
industry, premiered at the Miami International Film Festival, was nominated for a Gotham
Award for “The Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You,” screened at the Museum of
Modern Art, and was awarded the Grand Prize of the George H. Mitchell Award for
Excellence in Graduate Research—the top prize for the year’s graduate dissertations and
theses at The University of Texas at Austin. His short documentary, Slow Season, about a father
and son’s memories of the BP oil spill, premiered at Austin Film Festival and screened in many
coastal areas threatened by oil and gas exploration, as part of a Working Films community
screening tour, called Shore Stories. His 16mm short film, Bebe, won the Eastman Scholarship
from Kodak and screened in a student showcase at the Cannes Film Festival.

Through his production company, Fiege Films, he works as a producer, director,
cinematographer, and photographer on a wide range of projects, with clients that include The
New York Times, MTV, PBS, CBS, Discovery Channel, Greenpeace, Environmental Defense
Fund, Planned Parenthood, Whole Foods, Smuggler, SEIU, W. Alton Jones Foundation, and
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, among other companies and organizations. He
photographed the Sundance documentary selection, No No: A Dockumentary, and has
worked on many other feature documentaries, including Reversing Roe, which premiered at the
Telluride Film Festival. Other films he photographed have played at festivals worldwide,
including Tribeca, Edinburgh, Clermont-Ferrand, San Francisco, LA, and True/False.

His still photography work has been published in a variety of magazines, books, and
newspapers, including a feature article in Orion Magazine on his photographs of the
resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline in East Texas. His I Will Vote project, which featured
large scale photographic prints and a video installation of politically active young people in
Texas, was exhibited in galleries in Austin and Houston.

He holds a BA from Carleton College, an MS in cultural geography and environmental history
from The Pennsylvania State University, and an MFA in film production from The University of
Texas at Austin, where he also worked as a lecturer. He has given guest lectures about his
work at universities and festivals around the world, including as the Bernstein Visiting Scholar
and Alumnus-in-Residence at Carleton College. He is currently Assistant Professor in the
Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and an
affiliate of the Department of Environment and Sustainability.