Inquiries & Commissions - evanbrace@gmail.com
I was born in Texas, but I grew up in the middle of somewhere America. Mexico, Missouri to be exact. Imagine a stark desert with grass instead of sand and one lonely water tower standing in the center. Bordered around rural farms and dying industrial plants. A slow town can give you a deep understanding of the layers of life with a lot of room to dream. Oddly, this small town had a century old playhouse. In the curtains of theatre and in the shadows of my mother I would watch her direct people of the town in fiction. I was pulled into the worlds of Arthur Miller, Mamet, Dickens and Steinbeck. My mother’s belief that you can make art with the bank teller, the butcher and the postman has always stuck with me. It also showed me that we are all being called to the language of story. She never underestimated everyday folk.
As one does, especially as a middle child, I rebelled and tried to flee all things dramatic arts and the Midwest, but when the living kaleidoscope i.e. the new video store was built, everything changed. This new frontier led me to explore the dimension of cinema. After leaving the Midwest, I studied under Asian and Avant-garde cinema writer, Chuck Stephens (Criterion, Cinema Scope, Film Comment). I was exposed to the philosophies of Hiroshi Teshigahara, Robert Bresson, David Lynch and Nicolas Roeg. This awakened a transformative view of transcendental cinema and the mysterious qualities it can have on art. My experience working under Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, The Handmaiden), provided me with a huge insight into the kind of director I wanted to become. I studied his ability to find the light in darkness and purpose in pain. “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” Having the privilege of spending time with both Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man, Down by Law) and John Patrick Shanley (Doubt) they both told me the same thing… “Leave America for a bit. Read, write and create, but if you can muster, leave everything you know to know more.” So I moved to Thailand then to Japan. After that movement and spending a period in Nashville, I moved to Los Angeles with my wife and pug. This is where I currently reside as a full time writer/director.
My films have screened for a wide array of audiences from international film festivals to art exhibits in Berlin, France, Turkey, etc. I’m also a recipient of two Vimeo Staff Picks and was a Shudder Labs fellow in 2017. In 2018 AMC/Shudder/SundanceNow acquired my first original series. I’m currently developing/writing further narrative projects and working towards my feature film debut.
Work Seen On: Gizmodo, MTV, Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly, BET, Pitchfork, SPIN, VEVO, CMT, IMVDb, VideoStatic, FILTER, Stereogum and Dissolve.
Clients Include: TikTok, APPLE, Yamaha, Coca-Cola, Vitamin Water, RCA, UNIVERSAL, ATLANTIC, WARNER, SONY, Capitol Records, Dim Mak, AMC Networks, Big Machine Label Group, FIAT, ESPN, ORECK, AUTOBODY AMERICA, Nashville Zoo, Television Food Network, Georgia-Pacific, Republic Records, NESTLÉ and Sharper Image.
Acknowledgements:
Shudder Labs Fellow 2017
2x Vimeo Staff Pick Recipient
International Usak Winged Seahorse Festival - 2019 - DONOMA
Loophole Berlin Exhibition 2016 - Art Film, UNCERTAINTY
Bel Esprit Showroom Premiere (Paris, France) - Art Film, Goshu Ondo
Lyric Video of the Year | Tiesto - LA Music Video Festival 2014