Hello. My name is Leon Chase. I grew up in the industrial suburbs south of Detroit. Now I live in Brooklyn, New York.
I have self-produced two feature documentaries. The first, Fancy Feast: The Fat Burlesque Performer, screened at Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan, the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco, and the 2017 Coney Island Film Festival. The second, Suzy Hotrod: Roller Derby Star, appeared at Berlin’s Too Drunk to Watch festival, and at the 2019 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, where it won the Audience Choice Award.
I’m currently wrapping my third documentary, about the legendary deceased Brooklyn dive bar Hank’s Saloon. You can watch the teaser and find more info here.
As a professional Editor, I’m proud to have worked on Seayoon Jeong‘s surreal experimental feature Nyctophobia, which won Outstanding Editing at the 2024 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival. I also did initial editing on Lola RocknRolla’s documentary The Big Johnson, all about iconic queer/nightlife pioneer Dean Johnson, which won Best Feature at the 2025 Lower East Side Film Festival. And I had the pleasure of serving as Assistant Director on Cory McAbee’s Deep Astronomy and the Romantic Sciences, which premiered in the fall of 2022.
Since December 2022, I have worked as live Videographer for the incredibly talented queer drag/burlesque collective Switch n’ Play, where I have borne witness to some of the most outlandish live acts currently in existence, including a performance by “Drag Race” alum Sasha Velour at Lincoln Center. In late 2024, was also invited to film and edit several reality-style promo videos for the plus-sized burlesque group Bounce House.
I am the founder and curator of Attack of the 50-Foot Movie, a monthly underground event where I show cult films in the back of a bar, accompanied by live burlesque performances and my own peculiar collection of vintage movie weirdness.
Some other films I’ve directed: the sexploitation parody The Pill Girls, the comedic Film Noir Upper West Side Story, and Distant—a 2-minute horror short created for the late Roger Corman’s Quarantine Film Festival that went on to be featured in the 2020 Coney Island Film Festival.
That same year, I created the (apparently) controversial mashup Blade Runner: The Lost Cut, as well as the experimental art video Fever Dreams, comprised entirely of public-domain footage and audio samples.
You can see more of my editing work, including trailers, corporate, and music videos, here.
For nearly a decade, I fronted the cowpunk band Uncle Leon and the Alibis. I directed the music video for our song “Wild Ways” and orchestrated the guerrilla video project “Beer Train”—performed live on a New York City subway car—for the 2013 Couch by Couchwest Festival, where it won Most Creative Location.
If you need an editor, a videographer, a screenwriter, or just someone to show up on your podcast and run his mouth, hit me up.