MARSHA KINDER
Executive Producer and Project Leader

MARSHA KINDER began as a scholar of 18th century English literature, writing on Henry Fielding’s movement from the theater to the novel before turning herself to film, television and digital media. Although “transmedia migration” soon became the pattern of her own career, she retained a lifelong interest in narrative experimentation. She is currently a Professor of Critical Studies in USC’s School of Cinema-TV where she has been teaching since 1980. In 2001 she was named a University Professor in recognition of her innovative transdisciplinary research, an honor bestowed on only 17 faculty in USC’s history. Since 1997 she has directed The Labyrinth Project, a research initiative on interactive narrative at USC’s Annenberg Center for Communication. There she assembled a team of media artists who have developed multi-tiered collaborations with independent filmmakers (Pat O’Neill, Carroll Parrott Blue and Peter Forgács), writers (John Rechy and Norman Klein), students, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions. Working at the pressure point between theory and practice, Labyrinth has produced a series of innovative database documentaries, with a specialty in two subgenres--digital city symphonies and urban memoirs. Their installations, DVD-ROMs and websites have been exhibited at museums and festivals worldwide and have won major awards (the Jury Award for New Narrative Forms at Sundance, best overall design from New Media Invision, and the British Academy Award for best Interactive Design in the Learning Category). Under Kinder’s leadership, Labyrinth has developed new models of digital scholarship that combine cultural history with artistic practice and that dramatize the archive.

Besides being a multimedia producer, Kinder is a cultural theorist and a prolific film scholar whose work on Spanish cinema has been particularly influential. She is the author of over 100 published essays and 10 books, whose titles include, Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games (1991) and Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain (1993), as well as several edited collections —Refiguring Spain: Cinema, Media, Representation (1997), Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1999) and Kids’ Media Culture (1999). She was the founding editor of Dreamworks (1980-1987), an award-winning interdisciplinary quarterly on dreams and the arts, and since 1977 has served on the editorial board of Film Quarterly. Kinder holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles.