SHORT BIO
Leilah Weinraub is a film director based in Los Angeles and New York. Her films and installations have been presented at the Whitney Biennial, Hammer Museum, São Paulo Biennial, MoMA PS1, Tate Modern, and Berlinale.
She is the director of SHAKEDOWN (2018), Seek No Favor (2025), and The Kids (2025).
Weinraub was a founding member of Hood By Air and is the founder of Texarkana, an independent studio.
LEILAH WEINRAUB
CV
Born in Los Angeles, CA
Lives and works in New York and Los Angeles
EDUCATION
2009 Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
2002 Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2018 SHAKEDOWN, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Harlem, New York, NY
2018 SHAKEDOWN, What Pipeline, Detroit, MI
PERFORMANCES
2025 The Kids, live play presented at New Theater Hollywood, in conjunction with the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. 2025, Los Angeles, CA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 Made in L.A. 2025, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
2023 São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil
2021 Moving Image Biennial, Center for Contemporary Art, Geneva, Switzerland
2021 LEAN, Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway
2021 LEAN, Performa, New York, NY
2019 RE:WORKING** LABOR*, School of the Art Institute Sullivan Galleries, Chicago, IL
2018 Putting Out, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, NY
2017 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
AWARDS, NOMINATIONS, AND FELLOWSHIPS
2025 NewFest’s Black Filmmakers Initiative Emerging Black LGBTQ+ Filmmaker Award
2019 Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow
2018 Indie Memphis, Best Documentary Feature
2018 Outfest, Special Programming Committee Award
2018 Nominee, Berlin International Film Festival, Best Documentary Film
2017 Whitney Biennial Participant
2015 CFDA Award
2015 LVMH Prize
SHAKEDOWN — SELECT SCREENINGS & PREMIERES
2020 Released on Pornhub.com/ART, The Criterion Channel (Tell Me: Women Filmmakers, Women’s Stories), DIS Director’s Commentary, Locally Grown TV (Tyler Mitchell’s Night at the Cinema), Boiler Room COVID Screening
2018 World Premiere, 68th Berlin International Film Festival, Panorama Documentary Section, Berlin, Germany
2018 US Premiere, True/False Film Festival, Columbia, MO
2018 Outfest, Los Angeles, CA
2018 MoMA PS1, Queens, NY (New York Premiere)
2018 Sheffield Doc/Fest, Sheffield, UK (UK Premiere)
2018 Tate Modern, London, UK
2018 Seoul International Women’s Film Festival (Asian Premiere)
2018 Durban International Film Festival (African Premiere)
2018 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
2018 Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Brooklyn, NY
2018 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
2017 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
SHAKEDOWN — FILM FESTIVALS & INTERNATIONAL SCREENINGS
2020 Lesborama Brussels (Belgium); Reel Affirmations (Washington, D.C.); Rockaway Film Festival (Queens, NY)
2019 Reelout Queer Film & Video Festival (Kingston, Canada); Boiler Room Festival, La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris, France); Maysles Cinema (New York, NY); OutView Athens International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (Greece); Melbourne Queer Film Festival (Australia); CineQ Birmingham (UK); Porn Film Festival (Vienna, Austria); Baltimore Film Fatales (Baltimore, MD); Sidewalk Film Festival (Birmingham, AL); Bertha DocHouse (London, UK); Queer Film Festival Munich (Germany)
2018 Wicked Queer: Boston LGBT Film Festival; Maryland Film Festival; QDoc Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival; Seattle International Film Festival; Frameline42 (San Francisco, CA); Ciclo Rosa (Bogotá, Colombia); Vancouver Queer Film Festival (Canada); Hamburg International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (Germany); Queer Lisboa (Portugal); Reeling 2018 (Chicago, IL); POP Montreal International Music Festival (Canada); Porn Film Festival Berlin (Germany); Indie Memphis (Memphis, TN); Santa Fe Independent Film Festival (Santa Fe, NM); FIAC (Paris, France)
SELECT VIDEO INTERVIEWS
2019 Shakedown Director Leilah Weinraub, interview by Mireille Miller-Young, University of California Television (UCTV)
2018 MMK Talks, Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, YouTube
2018 Shakedown Q&A, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, YouTube
BIBLIOGRAPHY (SELECTED)
2020
Drew, K., & Wortham, J. (Eds.). Mother of the House: Thomas J. Lax with Art by Leilah Weinraub. Random House.
Dry, J. “Shakedown Is the Lesbian Strip Club Doc Good Enough That It’ll Be on Both Pornhub and Criterion,” IndieWire, March 3.
Donnelly, M. “Pornhub to Release First Ever Non-Adult Film, About Black Lesbian Strip Club Culture (EXCLUSIVE),” Variety, March 3.
Ryzik, M. “How Do You Make a Film for a Museum and Pornhub? Ask Leilah Weinraub,” The New York Times, April 3.
2018
Costa, C. da. “Leilah Weinraub’s Radical Cinema of Privacy in Shakedown,” The New Yorker, March 16.
Black, H. “Shakedown: LA Confidential,” Dazed, June 28.
Barber-Plentie, G. “I Wanted To Make a Film That Makes You Feel Like You’re in the Middle of the Storm: An Interview with Shakedown Director Leilah Weinraub,” Another Gaze, June 28.
2017
Eckardt, S. “Hood by Air’s Leilah Weinraub on the Debut of Her Film About a Black Lesbian Strip Club at the Whitney Biennial,” W Magazine, May 23.
HOOD BY AIR — RUNWAY SHOWS & PRESS
2016 Hood By Air: Radical Aggression, The New Yorker, Glazek, C., Sept.
2016 The Most Outrageous Hood by Air Fashion Moments, Allure, Bateman, K., Sept 9.
2015 The Ambiguously Gendered, Pan-Sexual, In-Your-Face Rolling Party of Hood by Air, The Cut, Larocca, A., Feb 12.
2015 Hood by Air’s 5 Most Memorable Moments, W Magazine, Petrarca, E., Sept 9.
2014 Hood by Air’s Collective Fashions, The New York Times, Weiner, J., Sept 12.
2013 Hood by Air Has a Fashion Moment, The New York Times, Hawgood, A., Apr 10.