About

Sid Fiore Branca (b. 1987, New York) is an experimental filmmaker, time-based artist, and moving image academic based in Chicago and Montréal.

Branca’s current work is primarily in cinema (both making films and studying them) and projection design, but remains heavily entwined with a background in experimental theater performance, physical improvisation, and performance art, as well as an ongoing creative writing practice. They use “time-based” as an expansive term spanning film, video, performance, sound, music, browser-based multimedia projects, artist’s books, and texts of many kinds.

They often blend live performance methods and editing processes: using theatrical improvisation techniques to generate material for films, creating videos to operate in tandem with live stage performance, building multimedia works to be experienced by an audience engaged in a kind of performance. There is often play with genre: making use of the symbolic functions of science fiction and horror, or drawing on formal properties from music videos, guided meditations, youtube vlogs, fan websites, and occult rituals. Thematically, their work frequently expresses (directly or metaphorically) experiences related to gender, sexuality, kink, and disability.

Current projects include:

• Post-production for A Real Inverted Person, a stage-to-film adaptation in collaboration with Bree Dani Parman.

• Pre-production for Quiet in the House, a feature-length psychological horror film centered on a group of actors in a haunted theater (fundraising campaign launching soon!)

• Projection designing for Evanston Salt Costs Climbing by Will Arbery, produced by First Floor Theater.

Residencies have included the Artist in Residence Niederösterreich (Krems, Austria), Arteles Creative Center Neo Future Residency (Haukijärvi, Finland), the Swarm Artist Residency (Plymouth WI, USA), and (with First Floor Theater) a Logan Center for the Arts Performance Lab Residency (Chicago IL, USA). Branca has been a recipient of a Finlandia Foundation Cultural Project Grant, a Rosenblum Award from Columbia College Chicago, an Odyssey Scholarship from the University of Chicago, and the Karen and Jim Frank Excellence in Teaching Award from the Art Institute of Chicago. Branca’s work has been featured in The Wrong Biennale, the Onion City Experimental Film Festival, the Center for Book and Paper Arts, the Chicago Fringe Festival, the Neo-Futurarium, and Salonathon, among others. They are a member of the New Media Caucus and the College Art Association, and hold degrees from the University of Chicago (Theater and Performance Studies) and Columbia College Chicago (Interdisciplinary Arts and Media). Branca taught as a faculty member in the department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for nearly a decade, beginning in 2015. In Fall 2025, they will join McGill University’s Department of English as a PhD student researching the history of circuses, clowns, and the carnivalesque in cinema.

Branca also works as a freelance video editor, actor, projection designer for theater, and director of music videos. Theatrical design credits include The Grelley Duvall Show and Floor Show (with Alex Grelle), Hooded; or Being Black for Dummies, Refrigerator, Always Nothing Else, and Daddy’s Girl (with First Floor Theater). Acting credits include those with Curious Theatre, Mary-Arrchie, the Plagiarists, the Inconvenience, First Floor Theater, and Prop Thtr, as well as on-camera performances including work with Rob Zombie, Joe Swanberg, and Chivo Lubezki.

email: sid[at]sidbranca.com

bluesky // instagram // letterboxd // email for my discord handle