Sasha Waters also known as Sasha Waters Freyer, is an American documentary and experimental filmmaker, feminist and educator.
She has produced and directed over twenty films, most of which originate in 16mm. Her films have screened at the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image, Union Docs and the Gene Siskel Film Center. Selected festivals include IMAGES in Toronto, the Telluride Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales Traverse Vidéo and International Film Festival Rotterdam.
She has had solo retrospectives of her films at Fisura Festival Internacional de Cine y Video Experimental in Mexico City, Microscope Gallery in Chelsea, and The Brattle in Cambridge. She is also a Professor of Photography and Film at VCU School of the Arts in Richmond, Virginia.
Early life and education
Sasha Waters was born in Brooklyn and educated at the University of Michigan and the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she earned her BFA in Photography in 1991. She earned her MFA in Film & Media Arts from Temple University in Philadelphia where she studied with filmmakers Lynne Sachs and Rea Tajiri.
Career
Waters began her career working for icons of the '90s film scene in New York: Michael Almereyda, Barbara Kopple, Hal Hartley, and Ang Lee among them. Her academic career began at the University of Iowa in 2000, where she taught until the end of 2012. From 2013 to 2019, she was the Chair of the highly ranked VCU School of the Arts Department of Photography + Film where she is currently a Professor.
Waters co-directed her first film, Whipped (1998), with Iana Porter. A 16mm documentary portrait of three professional New York dominatrixes, Whipped premiered at the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, screened at the 1998 Chicago Underground Film Festival, and was called a "likable, low-key demystification of a potentially lurid subject," by Variety. Her next film, Razing Appalachia chronicled a years-long struggle against the expansion of a mountaintop removal mine by Arch Coal in rural West Virginia. Writing about the film in The New Yorker when it aired on the PBS series Independent Lens in 2003, Nancy Franklin wrote that it was a good example of "what makes public TV valuable."
Waters' 2010 film Chekhov for Children documents a full-length production of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya staged in 1979 at Symphony Space on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Directed by Phillip Lopate, the play's cast and crew were made up entirely of 5th and 6th grade students from P.S. 75 on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Chekhov for Children premiered in the US at the Telluride Film Festival and at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. It was listed as one of the "Best Undistributed Films" of the year in the IndieWire Annual Critics Survey, 2010. In August 2026, The New York Times recommended Chekhov for Children as a "streaming pick," asking, "Why is this wonderful documentary not better known?"
Waters' feature documentary Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable screened theatrically and at festivals in 2018, was called one of the year's best by The New Yorker's Richard Brody, and won a Special Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition at the SXSW Film Festival. The film aired on the PBS series American Masters in April 2019.
Since 2022, Waters has completed a trilogy of experimental short films that turn an anti-colonial and feminist lens onto the history of photography and cinema – cyanotypes in Ghost Protists, magic lantern glass slides in Fragile, and popular romance in Ashes of Roses. They have screened at more than sixty festivals, museums and galleries around the world, including the Seattle International Film Festival, Chicago Underground, Festival Internacional de Curtas de São Paolo, and Uppsala Short Film Festival, International Competition.
Waters is the director, producer and co-editor of the 2026 feature documentary, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, a co-production between Pieshake Pictures and American Masters. Mary Oliver premiered on the Opening Night of the 2026 True/False Film Festival, had its international premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival, and was released in more than fifty theaters across the U.S. and Canada by esteemed arthouse distributor Kino Lorber. The film had its broadcast debut on the PBS series American Masters on August 25, 2026.
↑Waters Freyer, Sasha (May 23, 2013). "Sasha Waters Freyer". videoart.net (Interview). Interviewed by Katya Yakubov. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved September 5, 2016.
