Sandra Luckow

Born in Centralia, Washington, Sandra spent the first 18 years of her life in "Twin Peaks" country, the Great Northwest. The majority of her childhood was spent in Clackamas, Oregon, a then rural county outside of Portland. She had an eclectic childhood: she trained as a figure skater, performed professionally as a ventriloquist, worked as a child laborer in the strawberry fields for Smuckers Cannery, spent weekends on Mt. St. Helens (before the eruption, of course) and worked in her family's tropical fish store. She graduated valedictorian from Clackamas High School and she and a fellow classmate were the first people in its history to be accepted to Yale University. At Yale, she discovered film and doubled majored in American Studies and Film Studies -- a major that did not exist until her junior year. At Yale, in lieu of writing the required senior essay for graduation, Sandra petitioned to make a documentary film. She graduated with honors and distinction in the majors. At graduation, the film won the Louis Sudler Prize in the Performing and Creative Arts, marking the first time Yale had recognized a film project. Eight years later the subject of that film Sharp Edges, became infamous in 1994. Tonya Harding was involved in one of modern history's most notorious sport's scandals. Clips of the film, along with interviews of Sandra were shown in subsequent documentaries such as "CBS 60 Minutes"; "Anything to Win"; "ESPN's 30 for 30 the Price of Gold" and "ABC 20/20 Truth and Lies: The Tonya Harding Story." Thirty years after it was made, it became the visual bedrock for "I, Tonya." Allison Janney's Mrs. Harding, down to the parrot on the shoulder is taken from Sharp Edges. " I, Tonya" distributor NEON will soon be releasing "Sharp Edges." Sandra immediately enrolled in the MFA program at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Graduate Film and Television where she concentrated in writing and directing. It was during this time, while working the 11pm-7am shift as a paralegal at a 24/7 law firm, that she met fellow artist, friend and long-time professional collaborator, Peggy Flood. They co-wrote Sandra's thesis film "True or False" which one five awards at the First Run Festival including Excellence in Filmmaking and Best Actor. Sandra worked for various icons in the filmmaking industry including Frances Coppola, and Paul Schrader, In 1996 she made "Belly Talkers" for Harvey Weinstein at Miramax. She completed a stint as an associate director at the ABC soap opera "One Life to Live." She has been teaching film production at Yale University's School of Art since 1997 and has taught workshops at Columbia University, Barnard, SUNY Purchase and The Chinese International School in Hong Kong. She has developed and run a unique six-week production program at Yale Summer Sessions. She has worked as a camera operator on several reality television shows, directed shot and edited numerous documentary shorts such as the award winning "A World Within: A Miniature Portrait" and Diana Automata for the Yale Art Gallery and is on the MET website. She was the director of photography on a feature documentary that took her to China in 2007. She has adapted a screenplay based on the life of Dr. Barth Hoogstraten, "Blind Man's Bluff." It is a WW II memoir set in Holland. She has participated twice in the "Lines and Spaces" cultural exchange of writers and storytellers through the International Writers' Program at the University of Iowa that took her to India and Ecuador. Beginning in 2010 Luckow embarked on her most personal project, a feature-documentary, "That Way Madness Lies...". Sandra and her family trek the broken mental health system in an effort to save her brother as he descends into madness. Beginning as a testimony of his sanity, his iPhone video diary ultimately becomes an unfiltered look at the mind of a man with untreated schizophrenia. It won Best Documentary Feature at the Hot Springs International Women's Film Festival where Luckow was also the Keynote speaker and a special Jury Award at the Richmond International Film Festival. She was keynote speaker at the 2018 Big Apple Women's Film Festival and has been named as 2018 Artist-in-Residence as part of the Global Mental Health Program at Columbia University NEA Award Grant. She is a proud member of the International Documentary Association, New York Women in Film and Television and the Director's Guild of America.