Director and UNCSA professor Molly Bernstein is scheduled to attend an in-person Q&A following the film

Finding unexpected beauty in the discarded and decayed, photographer Rosamond Purcell has developed an oeuvre of work that has garnered international acclaim, graced the pages of National Geographic and over 20 published books, and has enlisted admirers such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Errol Morris and Stephen Jay Gould. AN ART THAT NATURE MAKES details Purcell’s fascination with the natural world—from a mastodon tooth to a hydrocephalic skull—offering insight into her unique way of re-contextualizing objects both ordinary and strange into sometimes disturbing but always breathtaking imagery.

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Molly Bernstein is an award-winning independent filmmaker. She is director, producer, and editor of four feature documentaries: Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse (2024); The Show’s The Thing: The Legendary Promoters of Rock (2018); An Art That Nature Makes: The Work of Rosamond Purcell ( 2015); and Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay(2012).  Her films have been broadcast on PBS American Masters and showcased in film festivals throughout the US and Europe, including The New York Film Festival, DOC NYC, San Francisco International, SXSW London, Berlin Brandenburg, Dublin and Helsinki. Three of her films have premiered at Film Forum in NYC and been distributed in theaters in the US and the UK. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter,LA Times, Vanity Fair and Women in Hollywood, and in US and international museums. Bernstein is on the faculty of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

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