Kate Schermerhorn

Kate Schermerhorn is an Emmy-winning filmmaker and photographer. Of her work, The New Yorker says, “nothing seems wasted, nothing’s excessive” and the Evening Standard says “there’s a mesmerizing quality to (Kate’s) work”.

Kate’s first film (KQED co-production), Seeking 1906 followed writer Simon Winchester up and down the San Andreas fault, from California to Alaska via the Alaska Highway. Kate won a Northern California Emmy for outstanding achievement as director, and nomination for outstanding achievement for a cultural/historical program for Seeking 1906, which was broadcast nationally on PBS. Her second long form doc, After Happily Ever After, explored modern marriage, including her own as it fell apart. The film won the 2012 Council for the Contemporary Family Media Award and was broadcast on America Reframed. She recently won a Telly Award for her new film, Do I Need This? as well as the Audience Choice Award at the Green Film Festival of San Francisco.

Kate’s photographic work often looks at the relationship between the natural and the artificial in everyday life. She is the author of a book of photographs, America’s Idea of a Good Time, about Americans at play at the turn of the 20th century.

Kate has directed 100s of videos, won 3 Tellies and 1 Emmy, been nominated for 1 more, lived in 4 countries, jumped out a plane 27 times and is the mother of 2. She is a recent graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. Kate compares her work to a person dressed as a polyester Statue of Liberty, holding a sign spinner which is strategically pointed to say, "LOOK HERE!"