Mike Olenick
História
Mike Olenick makes perverse genre films focused on photography, forbidden desire, reproduction, transformation, memories, and outer space. His films have screened at Fantastic Fest and Fantasia, streamed on MUBI, played on Dutch television, and have won awards at the Slamdance Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Cinematexas, Big Muddy Film Festival, and Nightmares Film Festival, among others. In 2016 he was one of the inaugural fellows at Shudder Labs, where he developed a script for a sci-fi / horror feature.
Mike has worked as an editor of projects for Guy Maddin (including The Forbidden Room and Keyhole), Michael Robinson, Kelly Reichardt, the Quay Brothers, Lucy Raven, and Sadie Benning. Since 2003 he has edited numerous works for Jennifer Reeder, including A Million Miles Away, Blood Below the Skin, and Knives and Skin. Works he's edited are in the collections of MoMA and the Tate.
Mike received his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art with an emphasis in Photography and a BFA in Media Studies from the Columbus College of Art & Design. He was a fashion “do” in Vice Magazine and his love of cats has been documented on Buzzfeed. When he is not putting together a jigsaw puzzle or drawing cats he is working on the script for a sci-fi / soap opera / thriller.
Editor
Charlie and Lisa, two divorced parents in their 40's who find themselves at a midlife crossroads. Both are single parents and they have four complicated teenagers.
Editor
O que aconteceu com Carolyn Harper? Uma onda de medo se espalha entre os residentes traumatizados da pequena cidade quando uma aluna do ensino médio desaparece. Com a chegada da noite, os adolescentes são tomados por uma sensação de despertar, desenvolvendo técnicas bizarras de adaptação.
Editor
A lone woman marks her trail and sheds some excess baggage along the way. A fresh take on the modern Western.
Editor
This is a glimpse into a day shared by an extremely sad father and his dare devil son. Each male has experienced an especially traumatic afternoon and although they bond over a love for skateboarding, neither is able to communicate their feelings.
Editor
'All Small Bodies' is a feminist, sci-fi take on the Grimm tale of Hansel and Gretel. It occurs in the distant future among the ruins of a planetary catastrophe, revealing the abuses of history and technology. In the wake of the chaotic aftermath, there are several resilient survivors including two young girls named Z and Bub. The film follows these curious adolescents who have long been lost and alone in the haunted, other-worldly woods, as they awaken their extrasensory abilities and reclaim their autonomy from a menacing dark presence.
Editor
A surreal sci-fi soap opera that collides the idiosyncratic private lives of both humans and aliens in a parade of hypnotic slow-zooms and kitschy feline totems.
Director of Photography
A surreal sci-fi soap opera that collides the idiosyncratic private lives of both humans and aliens in a parade of hypnotic slow-zooms and kitschy feline totems.
Producer
A surreal sci-fi soap opera that collides the idiosyncratic private lives of both humans and aliens in a parade of hypnotic slow-zooms and kitschy feline totems.
Writer
A surreal sci-fi soap opera that collides the idiosyncratic private lives of both humans and aliens in a parade of hypnotic slow-zooms and kitschy feline totems.
Director
A surreal sci-fi soap opera that collides the idiosyncratic private lives of both humans and aliens in a parade of hypnotic slow-zooms and kitschy feline totems.
Editor
LOLA, 15 is the first film in an upcoming series called LET ME GET WHAT I WANT THIS TIME. Its a short, formal documentary which intimately observes the sacred spaces of a fifteen year old girl named Lola. The larger series will examine many more of these spaces across a wide range of race, class, location and culture. The painful process of shedding adolescence is actualized in this highly curated interior--a sanctuary and visible elegy to childhood. Through languid drifts across the details of Lola's bedroom, a secret language is revealed.
Editor
Crystal Lake is about a group of young girls who take over a skate park, forming an all-female force field on the half pipe. There on the reclaimed ramp, with no boys around, they are thriving and visible. This is an anthem for young feminists, which presents female friendship as a means to survive adolescence.
Editor
A surreal and haunting reverie of youthful dreams and desire.
Editor
This short narrative chronicles a week in the lives of three teenage girls. They are high school classmates from different social circles, who form a bond in the wake of an unanticipated incident. Two of the girls are falling in love with each other against all expectations and the third girl is forced to mother her own mother after her father vanishes. Each girl seeks comfort within the walls of her bedroom where the music blasting from the turntable provides a magical synchronicity between them all.
Director of Photography
An adult woman (the conductor) on the edge of failing and a pack of teenage girls (the choir) simultaneously experience a supernatural version of coming-of-age. The transformation is equal parts tense and tender. It unravels patiently to the infectious beat of an 80s era heavy metal anthem rearranged as a lamentation.
Editor
An adult woman (the conductor) on the edge of failing and a pack of teenage girls (the choir) simultaneously experience a supernatural version of coming-of-age. The transformation is equal parts tense and tender. It unravels patiently to the infectious beat of an 80s era heavy metal anthem rearranged as a lamentation.
Male Victim
Anonymous notes, a jump rope, an overgrown yard, a crumpled piece of tinfoil, a baseball bat and a drill guide a group of individuals towards violence, sexual perversion and an inevitable encounter with Red Luck.
The Photographer
Anonymous notes, a jump rope, an overgrown yard, a crumpled piece of tinfoil, a baseball bat and a drill guide a group of individuals towards violence, sexual perversion and an inevitable encounter with Red Luck.
Red Luck
Anonymous notes, a jump rope, an overgrown yard, a crumpled piece of tinfoil, a baseball bat and a drill guide a group of individuals towards violence, sexual perversion and an inevitable encounter with Red Luck.
Director
Anonymous notes, a jump rope, an overgrown yard, a crumpled piece of tinfoil, a baseball bat and a drill guide a group of individuals towards violence, sexual perversion and an inevitable encounter with Red Luck.
Director
Memories, mirrors, madness and Memento collide in this experimental video essay focusing on the photographs and photographers in thousands of narrative films. All the Memory in the World is a stream-of-consciousness meditation on cinema, photography, identity, memory and dreams narrated by an insomniac who obsesses over images.
Director of Photography
A professional woman, traveling alone, recalls and reenacts an incident from her adolescence after injuring herself off-camera. This is a fractured little story about a business trip, a bloodstain and being okay.
Editor
A professional woman, traveling alone, recalls and reenacts an incident from her adolescence after injuring herself off-camera. This is a fractured little story about a business trip, a bloodstain and being okay.
Online Editor
In a realm beyond the senses, plants interact with surreal cinematography to chart the course of our character: an entity said to embody the life and work of Felisberto Hernández, Uruguayan father of magical realism. Through this journey, we are confronted with an open-ended experience questioning the nature of musicality versus cinematography, entity versus aberration, and self versus space, in a self-referential, blurry, digital and mystical setting.
Producer
An evening in a suburban household reveals a familial fault line: a woman and her husband argue diffidently in the kitchen, and, tucked away in her bedroom, their teenage daughter and her friend get ready for a school dance. The two pairs revolve around each other, repeating the same words, though they are all stricken with the same inability to connect.
Editor
An evening in a suburban household reveals a familial fault line: a woman and her husband argue diffidently in the kitchen, and, tucked away in her bedroom, their teenage daughter and her friend get ready for a school dance. The two pairs revolve around each other, repeating the same words, though they are all stricken with the same inability to connect.
Director of Photography
A professional sign language interpreter becomes very unprofessional as she suffers a sincere but hilarious emotional breakdown during a gathering for hearing impaired physics enthusiasts whose motto is “Let’s Get PhysicScal”.
Editor
A professional sign language interpreter becomes very unprofessional as she suffers a sincere but hilarious emotional breakdown during a gathering for hearing impaired physics enthusiasts whose motto is “Let’s Get PhysicScal”.
Producer
When a young woman with remarkable and hilarious coping skills finds the dead body of a teenage girl in the woods she is forced to reconcile her greatest fear--her fantastically failing life. This is a dark comedy about a mother, a daughter, a liar and her therapist.
Editor
When a young woman with remarkable and hilarious coping skills finds the dead body of a teenage girl in the woods she is forced to reconcile her greatest fear--her fantastically failing life. This is a dark comedy about a mother, a daughter, a liar and her therapist.
Director of Photography
When a young woman with remarkable and hilarious coping skills finds the dead body of a teenage girl in the woods she is forced to reconcile her greatest fear--her fantastically failing life. This is a dark comedy about a mother, a daughter, a liar and her therapist.
Editor
The politically and environmentally challenged landscape of the Bolivian town of Uyuni is the backdrop for a tense exchange between a man and a woman, which is intercut with sound from Peruvian radio.
Editor
Dramatization of the dull aftermath of a series of un-named and traumatic events shared by eight people. This project was inspired by an original survey on sadness distributed in the United States and Sweden.
Editor
An experimental film matching shifting colors with audio taken from an NPR radio interview with a mother who lost her son in the Iraq War.
