Alumna and Professor Alex Strada '16 2020 Recipient of the NYFA Women's Fund

Alumna and Visual Arts Adjunct Assistant Professor Alex Strada '16 is a recipient of the 2020 NYFA Women’s Fund for her documentary short, truths.

Strada, on her website, describes truths as “an in-progress film that uses Bertolt Brecht's Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties (1936) as a point of departure to explore the relationship between ‘truth,’ language, and labor in the ongoing political moment.”

“The film consists of long shots of hidden labor taking place throughout one block in Manhattan, set to a soundtrack of interviews with neuroscientists, poets, historians, philosophers, and climate scientists.”

Strada began working on truths in 2019 when she was a fellow in the Whitney Independent Study program. In a comment to the university, Strada said, “The NYC Women’s Fund will enable me to complete a project that I have fully devoted myself to artistically, intellectually, and financially...It is extremely gratifying to have this work be celebrated and supported. I look forward to the day when I can meet my fellow grantees and see their work.”

This year, the panelists for the documentary short category included Jillian Báez, Bedatri Datta Choudhury, Lana Lin,Traci Mark, and Akosua Adoma Owusu. The total amount of funds amounts to $2 million, divided amongst 94 women working in music, theatre, film and digital media projects. The 2020 cycle was the second round of a $5.5 million, three-year program funded by MOME (The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment) and administered by NYFA. This fund is an initiative to address the underrepresentation of all who identify as women in the entertainment industries. This year, Strada is one of eight documentary short makers to receive this fund. 

As for the future of the documentary, she hopes to show truths in a wide range of public and accessible institutions in each of the city's five boroughs, accompanied by a lecture or workshop relating to themes underlying the film.

Strada is an artist and educator based in New York City. Working across film, photography, and installation, her projects ask questions about the politics of representation, visibility of labor, and reproduction of collective memory. Her process is research-based and often involves collaboration. Strada's work has been shown internationally including exhibitions and screenings at the Anthology Film Archives, Socrates Sculpture Park, Museum of Moving Image, Goethe-Institut, Jewish Museum, National Museum of Iceland in Reykjavik, MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania, and on the screens of Times Square with Time Square Arts' Midnight Moment. She teaches at Columbia University and Fordham University.