Irina Patkanian Pro

Irina Patkanian is an award winning filmmaker, a Fulbright scholar, a professor of film and media arts at Television, Radio and Emerging Media department of Brooklyn College/CUNY, and the president of “In Parentheses,” a NYC based nonprofit film, theater & media arts company that supports immigrant women artists since 1995. 

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Irina Patkanian came to the U.S. in 1991 after graduating from the University of St. Petersburg with a BA in Philology of Germanic Languages (English Literature & Linguistics). After receiving an MA degree in Linguistics from the University of Iowa, she was awarded an American Association of University Women International Fellowship to pursue the MFA degree in Film Production. 

Irina Patkanian makes hybrid (fiction/nonfiction) films questioning history with poetry, memory with animation, performance with behavior. Irina’s films have screened at more than 140 film festivals worldwide (incl. DOC NYC, Ann Arbor, STARZ Denver, Palm Springs, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival) and won more than 20 best film awards. Her work has been supported by grants from New York State Council of the Arts, NYFA, Tow, Blaustein, Troy and Jerome Foundations, and artists residencies at MacDowell, Millay, Ucross, Villa Lena (Italy) Foundations, the Studios of Key West and Obermann Humanities center.