Courtney Fathom Sell

Courtney Sell was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1985. He is a director, writer, producer and composer known for his prolific documentary and experimental film career. Leaving film school after his first semester at age 19, Sell began traveling the country making documentaries with a Hi8 camera. Commonly utilizing the people and places he found himself surrounded by as subjects, Sell's collection of portraits are extremely personal. His debut documentary about the Gulf Coast directly after hurricane Katrina, "No Place Like Home," was discussed on the daytime talk show Ellen and his short doc "My Dying Day" about his Father's battle with cancer was supported by the Prostate Cancer Foundation. In 2010, Sell co-directed the award winning short documentary "The Hole" which was featured in Newsweek Magazine. Over the years, his films and writing have been featured in Filmmaker Magazine, indieWIRE and many other publications. He made several short comedies between 2011-2014 using various lo-fi techniques such as creating his own video filters. In 2017, Sell returned to the documentary genre as well as concentrating on the creation of many metaphysical experimental films. Much of his work has been archived at the New York Filmmakers Cooperative as well as the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. In 2019, his entire twenty-year spanning collection of early documentaries was officially released on VOD. He has given numerous lectures on the subject of poetic and documentary filmmaking at the Philosophical Research Society and through their online school, has also taught a course entitled "The Cultivation of the Creative Spirit through Film".