BORN JUST NOW

A fellow of the Sundance Institute Documentary Program, Robert Adanto earned his MFA in Acting from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. His most recent film Born Just Now, which offers an intimate look at Marta Jovanović, a Belgrade-based artist struggling to cope with the violence that has ended an eight-year marriage, was awarded Best Documentary at the 2019 Arte Non-Stop International Film Festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Produced by Anthony E. Zuiker, the film made its world premiere at BELDOCS International Film Festival in the former Yugoslavia and has been an Official Selection at the Prishtina International and Fort Lauderdale International Film Festivals, respectively. Robert made his directorial debut with The Rising Tide (2008), a feature-length documentary exploring China’s meteoric march towards the future through the words and works of some of the Middle Kingdom's most talented photographers and video artists, including Wang Qingsong, Cao Fei, Xu Zhen, Yang Yong, and Chen Qiulin. Shot in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen in the summer of 2006, this unflinching and incisive study captures the confusion and ambiguity that characterize the new China. “An often surprising and thought-provoking documentary,” wrote WICN’s Mark Lynch, “The rest of us better make an effort to grasp what their work is about, or get out of the way. An “eye-opener” in every sense of the word, if you are an artist, curator or art teacher be sure to catch this film.” Pearls on the Ocean Floor, his second film, examines the lives and works of Iranian female artists living and working in and outside the Islamic Republic. It features interviews with art luminaries Shirin Neshat, Shadi Ghadirian, Parastou Forouhar and others, and captures the uncertainty of this momentous time in Iran's history. Pearls on the Ocean Floor was an Official Selection at the UK Iranian Film Festival in London, The Glasgow International Film Festival, and received the Bronze Palm Award for Best Documentary at the 2011 edition of the Mexico International Film Festival and the Spirit of Independents Award at the 2012 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. In 2014, he completed City of Memory, a film exploring Hurricane Katrina's impact on the lives of New Orleans' visual artists, including Deborah Luster and Tameka Norris. The New Orleans Film Society invited Mr. Adanto in August of 2015 to present City of Memory at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, in association with The Rising, an exhibition commemorating the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Later that year, The F Word, Robert’s documentary exploring radical “4th wave” feminist performance in Brooklyn, and feautuing Narcissister, Ann Hirsch and Leah Schrager, was presented as part of the Guerrilla Girls' Twin City Takeover in Minneapolis at the Walker Art Center and at Dallas Contemporary, in association with Black Sheep Feminism: The Art of Sexual Politics, an exhibition probing the work of four radical feminist artists active since the 1970s: Joan Semmel, Anita Steckel, Betty Tompkins, and Cosey Fanni Tutti. Robert’s films have enjoyed screenings at over 40 international film festivals and have been presented at the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., the National Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, The MFA Boston, LACMA, The Hammer Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and The National Museum of Australia in Canberra, amongst others. He is currently living in New York City where he is working on an animated non-fiction film with producers Laszlo Santa and Dirk Manthey.