Philip Brubaker

History

Philip Brubaker is a filmmaker who works in non-fiction, experimental and hybrid genres. When he was sixteen, he created Squish Story (1996) an epic documentary about his friend Nate Weida, who wrote and staged an original high school musical. The film worked in homages to Kubrick, Scorsese and other directors Brubaker admired, which would foretell his future video essay work. Brubaker's breakthrough documentary on the film festival circuit was The National Hollerin' Contest (2003) about the peculiar North Carolina tradition. Brubaker filmed Brushes With Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness (2009) an advocacy documentary that featured frank interviews with several artists who live with diagnoses like schizophrenia, bipolar, borderline personality disorder. That film won a couple of industry awards and Brubaker received a grant from Eli Lilly for his positive and stigma-busting depiction of people who many have dismissed as 'crazy.' Brubaker was a member of the first class of students in Duke University's breakthrough graduate program in Experimental and Documentary Arts in 2011-2013. In 2016, Brubaker began a partnership with the streaming service Fandor, which resulted in the publication of more than 100 video essays Brubaker created over a two-year period.

Movies

Fistful of Brains
Camera Operator
The town of Shadowhawk is overrun with the undead when it gets caught in the war between two brothers, each leading their own army of the undead. One of the brothers has sold the townsfolk his “magical elixir” promising them immortality. What he doesn’t tell them is that he’s recruiting them for his zombie army, and they will develop an unquenchable hunger for human flesh!
Fistful of Brains
Second Unit Director
The town of Shadowhawk is overrun with the undead when it gets caught in the war between two brothers, each leading their own army of the undead. One of the brothers has sold the townsfolk his “magical elixir” promising them immortality. What he doesn’t tell them is that he’s recruiting them for his zombie army, and they will develop an unquenchable hunger for human flesh!