Carl Elsaesser, a member of Vassar’s Film Department faculty, has been named a 2026 Creative Capital Award recipient, part of Creative Capital’s national awards supporting new, ambitious work across artistic disciplines.
Carl was awarded the fellowship for his project Resonant Coastlines, a feature-length experimental film that tethers a young man’s emerging queer identity—captured in his stream-of-consciousness filmmaking practice—to Maine’s unseen histories and forgotten landscapes.