Gus Ford
Selected Films and Videos Shot by Gus Ford
Gus Ford has transitioned into cinematography after 20 years of working as a professional photographer, specializing in commercial travel, portrait, and landscape photography. His images have been published by New York Times, The Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK and others. As a cinematographer, Gus worked on the critically acclaimed movie Mule Skinner Blues (The Sundance Cannel) and several documentaries that he shot in Russia, Mozambique, Cuba, Turkey and Greece. Gus Ford has been a staff videographer of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and a Director of Photography on several film productions of multimedia production company Operation CMYK.
Children of the Revolution (2019)
Immersive Documentary feature
4 min. sampler
Produced by BMG/London, creative documentary celebrating 70th anniversary of Marc Bolan, lead singer/songwriter of T.Rex featuring Nick Cave, Lucinda Williams, Boy George, Joan Jett and many others. Co-directed with Ethan Silverman.
Little Fiel (2017)
Short documentary with stop motion animation 15 min.
Artist Fiel dos Santos grew up during the 16-year-long civil war in his home country of Mozambique. The only one of his family to never have shot a gun,
today he makes art out of guns to commemorate the lives lost.

Premiered at DOC NYC in November 2017 and has since played at more than 40 festivals
Best Short - BlackStar International Film Festival Accra, Ghana
Jury Short Documentary Award - 2nd prize - Ierapetra International Doc. Festival, Crete, Greece
Jury Short Documentary Award - 2nd prize - Woods Hole Film Festival; Cape Cod, MA
Best Screenplay - The African Film Festival, Dallas, TX
Best Short Documentary - Santorini Film Festival, Greece
Best Short Documentary - Bucharest ShortCut Cinefest, Romania
Best Original Score - Oregon Documentary Film Festival, Portland, OR
Director’s Choice Award - Black Maria Film Festival, Hoboken, NJ
Best International Film Award - DC Independent Film Festival, Washington, DC

For upcoming screenings, visit littlefiel.com
A Day of Teaching of the Dalai Lama (2012)
Avery Fisher Hall Lincoln Center
3 min. sampler of 3 hours video

Video documenting His Holiness the 14th Dali Lama visiting New York and DNKL Buddhist Center in Redding, CT and teaching a class at Lincoln Center on October 22, 2012. Directed/produced by Irina Patkanian; shot by Irina Patkanian and Gus Ford, commissioned by Kalmyk Three Jewels Foundation.
Socrates of Kamchatka (2017)
Documentary feature
54 min.
Socrates of Kamchatka blends documentary and fiction to tell a story about the regime change and its effect on a small community in the Far East of Russia. It follows Anfisa and her childhood horse for the past 30 years until 2012, when Anfisa becomes a very successful entrepreneur and Socrates is murdered by her neighbors put of envy and spite. Socrates’ voiceover is written in the tradition of “skaz” – a Russian subliterary idiom, mixture of naïve existentialism and absurdism, folk lyricism, opinion and fact. Narrated by Sergey Dreyden (lead actor of Sokurov’s “Russian Arc”).

Premiered at 2017 Ann Arbor Film Festival

2013 Honorable mention, at 62nd UFVA Annual Conference
2010 Jerome Foundation grant (Individual Artists/Film)
2010 Blaustein Foundation grant
“Below Zero” pitch forum, Tromso, Norway

Read review by Nicco Pandolfi here
Mario Batali: Three Ways
Marketing video, produced by CMYK
1. Sisters 2.Waterline 3.Children in Gold (2016)
Documentary poems. 9 min.
On average 4,200 people crossed every day in 2015. After disembarking, children get wrapped up into silver and gold thermal blankets and we tensely watch how the golden foil, quite eerie at first, morphs into regal finery and turns these children of foreign lands into precious gifts to us all – wonderful, fabulous, carrying the mystery of the future.
2018 XXV Visible Evidence International Documentary Conference
2018 Fargo Film Festival
2017 Global Impact Film Festival, Washington DC
2017 SR Socially Relevant Film Festival, NYC
2017 Impact Docs Film Festival (Award of Recognition)
2017 Docuwest Film Festival, Denver, CO
2017 Obermann Artist Residency
2017 Peace on Earth Film Festival, Chicago, IL (Best Short Documentary)
2016 Social Justice Film Festival in Seattle, WA
2016 Iowa Public Television
2016 “Iphigenia at Lesvos” a text/film essay is published by TCG
Armed Defense (2013)
Short fiction narrative 9 min.
Adapted the script from a short story “Guns” by a Russian writer Dmitry Bakin. A man comes to his home in Connecticut, burns all his personal items and sets up machine guns and barbed wire around the house. He is preparing to stand his ground and defend himself and his home against an immanent attack of a powerful but invisible enemy.


2013 Massachusetts Independent Film Festival Cambridge, MA
2013 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival Brooklyn, NY
2013 Big Apple Film Festival, New York, NY
2013 S.N.O.B. Film Festival, Concord MA
67th UFVA Orange, CA “Best Fiction Short”
32nd Starz Denver Film Festival, Denver, CO
Connecticut International Film Festival, CT
M.A.L.I. Women’s Film & Arts Festival, Austin, TX
Athens International Film Festival, OH
Big Muddy Film Festival, Carbondale, IL
NYSCA grant (Individual Artists/Film)
Second Egyptian (2007)
Short fiction narrative
adapted from a story by Marina Palei
17 min.

A Russian woman and an Egyptian man meet in NYC. She has no green card and hasn't eaten for days. He has a green card and invites her to his home, where he cooks her a dinner and tells her he is a virgin.

2008 Arts On the Lake, Screening & Discussion, Kent, NY
UFVA Conference, Colorado Springs, CO (award finalist)
New filmmakers Series at Anthology Film Archive, NY
Women's International Film Festival, South Florida
Arpa International Film Festival in LA, CA
San Diego Women Film Festival (Best Narrative Award)
Toys for Refugee Children (2016)
Fundraising video
3 min. more than 1000 views

Women and Health Alliance International, Eleni and 4 Brothers and a Friend are distributing toys and sweets at two Lesbos refugee camps: Kara Tepe and Moria.
Seven Songs for Iphigenia. (2015)
An experimental film and site specific theater performance. Part of Iphigenia Project.
15 min. sampler
Somos Cuba (2015-2022)
Observational Documentary
11 min. sampler

Somos Cuba is an observational documentary that follows three characters during the regime change in Cuba. Vladimir is a chef who has turned his living room into a restaurant while raising two teenage daughters as a single father. Ray is a construction worker by day and a bodyguard by night who still believes he lives in the revolution. Niko is an artist painting dilapidated buildings for sale to foreign tourists and compiling a collection of photographs of Havana’s “ladies of the night.” I will continue documenting their lives in January 2018 and 2021.
36.5 / Sarah Cameron Sunde (2014)
Durational Performance with the Sea
more informaion: 365waterproject.org
3.5 min. sampler
36.5 / a durational performance with the sea is a time-based project spanning years and continents: New York-based artist Sarah Cameron Sunde stands in a tidal area for a full cycle, usually 12-13 hours, as water engulfs her body and then reveals it again. It acknowledges the temporary nature of all things and considers our contemporary relationship to water in urban environments, as individuals and as a civilization. New York-based artist Sarah Cameron Sunde stands in a tidal bay for a full tidal cycle
3rd iteration: San Francisco Bay August 15, 2014 (9:26am - 10:31pm)
Lydian Junction at The Watermill Center (2014)
7 min. sampler

Lydian Junction was in residence at The Watermill Center (Robert Wilson's laboratory for performance). Lydian Junction uses mixed media (dance theater, art songs/electronic music, video/installation art) to create intense, irreverent, interdisciplinary live art.
Born for Nothing (2014)
11 min. scene
Born for Nothing is an interdisciplinary live art event structured as an investigation into methods of survival. Loosely inspired by themes in Knut Hamsun’s novel HUNGER and humanity’s current relationship to water—which experts predict could soon engulf us—Lydian Junction plays with the mundane and the extreme. BORN FOR NOTHING asks: do a person’s minute actions lead to monumental changes for a civilization, or are we just born for nothing?
Living Compassion (2014)
6 min. excerpt from 3 hour video
A closer look at the Presentation "Living Compassion The Dalai Lama's Life Story in Music, Pictures, and Words" by Tencho Gyatso niece of H.H.Dalai Lama and Nawang Khechog Grammy Nominated composer presented by DNKL https://www.dnkldharma.org/
Andrea Dezsö - One Art, One Life

Commissioned by Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT
She’s Lost Control

Commissioned by Jane Benson for Queens Museum, Brooklyn, NY
roll in the way
3 min. clip from 90 min. performance video
Commissioned by Ket Gilmore for Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT
Excerpt from “Extended Play: Tewhenuacentrochapinerocorona

Commissioned by Jane Benson

video work featuring a split guitar duet performed via live AV feed between New York City and Mexico City. The work explores the different musical and social aspects of division and connection using technologies of splitting and linking to imagine new forms of transcultural communication between two disparate parts of the world.

The split guitar duet of Extended Play: TeWhenuaCentroChapineroCorona is the first international geographically "split" duet. Thus, extending the split duet to an exploration of cultural and social distance and connections, aswell as, the disruption and regeneration of traditional aesthetic processes. Each of the musicians perform on half a classical guitar synchronizing a scored and improvised musical dialogue in which diverse traditions interact with, develop and expand alongside one another; where in spite of the distance between them, the two halves of the guitar resonate with the same music.
Wendell Castle - Wandering Forms

Commissioned by Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT