About Mike

Mike Olenick creates surreal and perverse genre-bending films about lonely individuals, photography, transformation, and forbidden desires. His films have screened at Fantastic Fest, the Fantasia International Film Festival, the Nightmares Film Festival, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. His work has streamed on MUBI, been broadcast on Dutch television, and included on The Journal of Short Film. The Cure, a soap opera turned sci-fi thriller, was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick and Red Luck won Best Experimental Film at the Slamdance Film Festival and Best Looking Film at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. He’s also won awards at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Cinematexas, Big Muddy Film Festival, and the Athens International Film + Video Festival, among others. In 2016 Mike was awarded a fellowship to attend the inaugural Shudder Labs and he has received several grants from both the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council.

In addition to editing his own films, Mike has edited numerous films for Jennifer Reeder (including Knives and Skin and A Million Miles Away) and Guy Maddin (assistant editor on The Forbidden Room and Keyhole). Mike worked at the Wexner Center for the Arts for over seventeen years, both as a video editor in their Film/Video Studio and as a project manager overseeing the archive of the Film/Video Studio. He currently runs an art & film consulting business, MIND MOIRÉ.

Mike has an MFA in Photography from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Media Studies from the Columbus College of Art & Design. He’s currently developing a sci-fi thriller about an alien on a mission to a dying planet Earth.