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Ilana Rein was born and raised in New York City and is a Los Angeles-based director and screenwriter. Her films have been screened at film festivals, galleries, and universities internationally. It's been written that Rein is "spearheading a new genre"* that blurs the line between science fiction and reality and that her work demonstrates a "...profound hunger to connect through art...stories that feel directly relevant to the challenges of the modern day."**
After receiving a B.A. from Oberlin College and an M.F.A from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Rein started her career as a photographer with her work being widely exhibited and published. She began directing films after the events of 9/11 and her first, Periphery, was an official selection of the New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center (run by the New York Film Festival) in 2002. The roots of Rein's film work grow from her award-winning film We Are All Cylons. In filming Cylons, she immersed herself in the world of Battlestar Galactica fandom and, as part of the creative process, "Rein imagined making the film as an AI would."*** Cylons premiered at Sci-Fi London Film Festival in 2011 and had an international festival run. Rein wrote and directed Ellipse, which was shot on location at The Royal Observatory in U.K. Ellipse premiered at the BFI in 2013 in London. To prepare, she collaborated with professors of AI and astrophysics at MIT and Princeton.
Perception is Rein's debut feature film. Two works in development, Alignment Project and Out of the Everywhere, are inspired by the year Rein spent in the remote Arizona desert researching unidentified aerial phenomena, Native American mythology, and astronomy. She is attached to direct the feature Penny Whistler, a film she and her writing partner--Brian Smith--were commissioned to adapt from the Ken Russell screenplay. Other projects in production and development include working on as Producer / Actor / Co-Director for Hellgat, an historical collaborative fictional film created by Lenore Malen and the New Society for Universal Harmony (now in post-production) ; Producer for Metal Kills which is in post, and producer for Better Angels, written by Eve Gendron based on her book Angels on My Tree which is in development.
Rein's work has been featured in numerous publications, including Wired, Doubletake, Scientific American, 9/9 Paris, and Art in America. Articles and interviews with Think Progress, Wired, Earth2Hub and Arcfinity are available online. She travels to New York City to collaborate with Guggenheim Fellow Lenore Malen on multi-media installations, most recently for State of Emergency, a guerrilla projection event that took place at the corner of Bowery and Prince Street in November 2017 and Eve in Sheepland, screened widely in 2019. Rein was a Faculty Associate at the Sidney Poitier New American Film School at ASU for 2 years starting 2020 where she was a director and producer on Channel Zed, an educational live-streaming channel.
* H. Honeycutt, Planet Etheria 3/12 ** A. Rosenberg, Think Progress 6/11 ***A. Watercutter, Wired 4/11
