Bruno Seraphin is a folklorist, musician, and narrative and documentary filmmaker. Originally from Massachusetts, he earned a BFA in Film Production from New York University, lived in Appalachian North Carolina for several years, and then moved to Eugene to complete an MA in Folklore Studies at the University of Oregon. His academic and professional interests include environmental justice, human-plant relationships, philosophies of place and space, anti-racist organizing, collaborative film-making, and the ways that social movements generate and use stories.
Bruno produced and directed the award winning experimental independent film “If I Had Wings to Fly,” which explores traditional music and storytelling in Western North Carolina, and his newest documentary, “Year of the Possum: The Green Grass Cloggers’ 40th,” will premiere in 2016. Bruno’s MA thesis, titled “Stories We Live: On the Hoop with Nomads of the Northwest” is an ethnography of a grassroots network of nomadic, mostly white “rewilders,” who use Indigenous ecological knowledge to harvest and replant wild foods in the Great Basin region of the United States, and in particular northeastern Oregon. Special attention is paid to their land ethic and their interactions with Native groups.