Biographical Note

Nietzchka Keene was an independent filmmaker and professor in the Communication Arts department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Keene was born in Boston, Massachusetts, 1952.

Her career as a filmmaker began in the 1970s when she received her MFA in Filmmaking from the University of California-Los Angeles; while there she made three student films, eventually receiving a Fulbright scholarship for her work. After her scholarship ended, Keene completed the script to The Juniper Tree which holds the honor of being the first film to star the young Icelandic pop star Björk. The film was shot entirely in Iceland in 1987 and was eventually released to great acclaim at various film festivals in the early 1990s.

Keene continued into the 1990s with an experimental animated short film titled Aves that used collage and various hand held animation techniques to tell the story of a cloistered nun. After Aves, Keene directed a feature for PBS's independent film showcase entitled Heroine of Hell. In 1995, Keene began her tenure as a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she taught filmmaking. In the early 2000s, Keene began work on what would be her final film project, entitled Barefoot to Jerusalem which was shot in Madison, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She was unable to complete this project before being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and dying in 2004 at the age of 52.

Filmography

1977	Ritual/Still: Early experimental film produced at University of California-Los Angeles.
1981	Hinterland: A young, recently orphaned girl is taken by a family friend from her home in Portland after the death of her parents, to the farm of her last living relative, her aunt. Her aunt is a reclusive and generally silent woman who lives alone on the farm, feeding a pet rabbit and tending to dry soil. When the rabbit dies unexpectedly, things take a turn for the worse.
1987	The Juniper Tree: Based on a Grimm fairy tale, a pair of sisters (Björk Guomundsdóttir and Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir) flee their home after their mother is stoned to death for witchcraft. Finding a young widower in the countryside, the older sister uses magic to force him to fall in love with her though her spells.
1994	Aves: A short, experimental animated film about the life of a cloistered nun using psychedelic visuals to express her inner turmoil.
1996	Heroine of Hell: Magda (Catherine Keener) a Miami based painter of medieval torture scenes, finds love in the arms of a dark haired lothario who is not as committed to their relationship as she would like. After trying to win him back from his new love interest with somewhat harassing phone calls, she steals his car and takes off into rural southern Florida. While on the lam, Magda watches a man burn alive in a car accident and vows to seek out his family to let them know what happened. In this process she meets Callum (Dermot Mulroney) and manages to fall in love again.
2002	Barefoot to Jerusalem: Keene's unfinished film about a woman who embarks on a journey to isolated northern Wisconsin in the wake of her lover's suicide, only to encounter a struggle with Lucifer. Filmed in 2001 in Madison, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The film was completed in 2008 after Keene's death.