Bilgesu Sisman is a philosophy PhD candidate, cinephile, film maker, and community programming manager at Film Streams. Sisman talks about the power of film to influence societal conversations, film’s capacity for expressing her imagination and philosophical questioning, and her intentions on how to live life well through an aesthetic of experience.

Originally from Istanbul, Turkey, Bilgesu Sisman is a writer, researcher, and film programmer with a background in the humanities. As a PhD candidate in Philosophy at DePaul University, Chicago, her thesis explores the history of necroviolence, meaning posthumous corporal violence, and its formative role in modern, colonial, and postcolonial state power. Besides political philosophy, she specializes in film theory and philosophy of cinema. Her first feature film, KNOTS – which focuses on a mathematics student seeking truth in the face of repressed trauma – is in pre-production stage. She currently resides in Omaha, NE and works as the Community Programming Manager Film Streams.