My name is Erin Harper

I grew up in the same house my dad grew up in, on a farm on the High Plains of eastern Colorado. I have had ten addresses since leaving.

I raised a herd of prized, milk-making machines; there were fifteen Holstein heifers named after percussion instruments. The milk money earned helped send me off to college.  Weird that I don’t like milk.

I completed a seven-video series during the pandemic for Grammy award-winning, Snarky Puppy violinist Zach Brock’s latest album, Polyphony. The shorts were shot and recorded in our attic during COVID in a 3x3 green screen box.

I am the co-director along with Erin Greenwell of Switchgrass Film Lab, a Northeastern Rural Plains Film Collective creating annual short films with youth, in collaboration with dance, theatre, animation, found sound, and puppetry. All work culminates in a community screening at local movie houses.

VERAL, a short film based on award-winning novelist Greg Hill’s short story, “Now Museum, Now You Don’t” screened at 15 festivals in the past year and is in negotiation for distribution. My feature adaptation of Hill’s debut novel and the first of his Strattford Trilogy series, EAST OF DENVER, is in development and was a Sundance Screenwriting finalist.

My current writing project, AJE, is a dramatic fantasy connecting a bloodline of women over 200 years, starting with the last so-called "Indian War" and ending in 2090. Natane, a Native American teenager, is led to preserve the bodies of her ancestors and extract the missing narratives of the brutal high plains town of Aje. Each episode focuses on a decade, with a finale surrendering to time as we know it. 

I’m creating an observational one-woman-band documentary farm series capturing different farm practices across the country.  Check out the “One-Woman Band” Page on this site to see three of those films.

In 2019/20 the full-length documentary, MY WILD HEART, screened at the Orlando Film Festival the Ashland Film Festival, and in partnership with The Denver Film Society and The Broomfield Film Project. I directed and edited this documentary with producer Lily Vakili about her father Nader Vakili, an Iranian-American plant geneticist and sculptor, who travels the world with his wife, Mary Jane, their six children, and six tons of accumulated tropical hardwood. Now at 91, with Mary Jane suffering from Alzheimer's and no longer living at home, Nader faces his mortality, the towering woodpile, and the absence of his beloved muse. Reciting Rumi, he dreams of carving a final statue to her memory.

I produced the feature film, MY BEST DAY, written and directed by Erin Greenwell, which premiered at The Sundance Film Festival in 2012.

I directed a short film, PASSION, receiving New York state funding for development into a live International tour of improvised film and jazz.

I’ve had the privilege to work as a cinematographer with Barbara Hammer on her two latest films, MAYA DEREN’S SINK, and WELCOME TO THIS HOUSE about Elizabeth Bishop.  The former received the Teddy Award at Berlinale Festival and the latter received support from the Guggenheim Fellowship.  

I edited 100 short videos for the YMCA of the USA about people who have changed their lives through the “Y.”  

I worked with the politically active Las Estrellas high school women of Yuma, CO.  With the sponsorship of Padcaster, I introduced cinematic storytelling to these young women by using tricked-out smartphones.

I’m honored to document world-renowned musicians in recording sessions and festivals and to direct documentaries about inspiring artists.

I don’t know how to reconcile urban and rural living. So, I keep making movies.