MFA, Film and Video, California Institute of the Arts

Digital Video Production & Post-Production (Cinematography, Editing, Sound Design), Documentary and Experimental Film and Video

Laura Kraning is an experimental non-fiction filmmaker and Associate Professor in the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo. She holds an MFA in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts, where she taught in the Program in Film and Video from 2012-2017. She has a wide range of experience working in film and television production and post-production in both New York and Los Angeles, on documentary, animation, narrative, and experimental video art projects, specializing as a cinematographer, sound designer, and editor on independent documentaries.

Laura’s films engage with landscape as a medium through an embodied practice of observational cinematography, immersive audio field recording, and abstract textural montage. A deep ecological current flows through her work, from the aftermath of a devastating wildfire at a flood control dam with an otherworldly history (DEVIL’S GATE) to the metallic landscape of a solar farm in California’s Mojave Desert (IRRADIANT FIELD), to the techno-glitching machine vision of an alien geological survey on Mars (MERIDIAN PLAIN), to California’s underground tar seeps (LAS BREAS), to unearthing the physical remains of ancient fossils and broken plastics in Western New York’s industrial landscapes (LANDFORMS).

In recent films, she deconstructs the material textures of landscape, mining the slips between stillness and motion, delving into tactile surfaces (FRACTURE), material decay (DE-COMPOSITION), and technological malfunction (ESP). Beyond landscape, her latest research explores intertwining processes of handmade film and textiles (INTERWOVEN INTERVALS).

Laura’s films have screened widely at international film festivals and venues, such as MoMA's Doc Fortnight, the New York Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Visions du Réel, and National Gallery of Art, among others. She has had retrospective solo screenings at Union Docs (NYC), Revolutions Per Minute Film Festival (Boston), REDCAT Theater (Los Angeles), Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo), Los Angeles Filmforum, Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester), First Person Cinema (Boulder), Athens International Film Festival (Ohio) and Burchfield Penney Art Center (Buffalo).

She is a recipient of the Princess Grace Foundation John H. Johnson Film Award, Jury Awards at the 2010, 2015 and 2016 Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Film House Award at the 2016 Athens International Film and Video Festival, the Jury Award for Short Film at the 2018 Rencontres Internationales Sciences et Cinémas, a 2019 NYSCA/Wave Farm Media Arts Grant, and a 2023 New York State Council for the Arts Support for Artists Grant.

In 2025, "DE-COMPOSITION" received a Jury Award at the 44th Thomas Edison Film Festival and "ESP" received the Best Animated Film Award at the Ribalta Experimental Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Moving Image Art Prize at the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin.