Niklas Vollmer
Associate Professor Director, Peripheral Visions Communication- Education
MFA University of California, San Diego
BFA University of Arizona
- Biography
Niklas Vollmer is an interdisciplinary artist and mediamaker who teaches film/video production and directs GSU’s Peripheral Visions, a new media research “hive” that employs innovative technological strategies to connect students, faculty and community collaborators on local, regional and global scales. His research and teaching interests include: experimental, avant-garde, and nonfiction theory and practice; community-based and subject participatory mediamaking; the essay film; video art; personal narrative and diary films; domestic ethnography, home movies and the representation of family; performance of masculinity; and the environmental documentary.
Niklas received an MFA in Visual Art from the University of California, San Diego, has been nominated for a Rockefeller Fellowship, and a recent documentary screened at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His experimental and documentary work has screened in the US, Canada, Europe, Africa, South America and Asia; and at AFI, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, California Museum of Photography, and the Directors Guild of Los Angeles. Recent honors include being chosen as a Documentary Expert (2009-10) and Filmmaker (2010) for the American Documentary Showcase, a program that brings recent American documentary films, filmmakers, and subject area specialists to audiences around the world via a cooperative grant by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State in collaboration with the International Documentary Association (IDA) and University Film & Video Association (UFVA).
Select distinctions include: Best Sports Documentary and the Original Vision Award at the International Documentary Challenge premiered at HOTDOCS, Experimental Faculty Juror Award from the University Film & Video Association, Best Short from United States Super 8 Film & Digital Video Festival and 2nd Place Experimental at AFI’s Vision of US Competition. Niklas has served as a Board Member of the University Film & Video Association. Before academia, he was a Public Television editor.