Hello. My name is Leon Chase. I grew up in the industrial suburbs of Detroit. For the past 25 years, I have lived in Brooklyn, New York.
I have self-produced three feature documentaries. The first, Fancy Feast, 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 the 2019 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, where it won the Audience Choice Award.
My most recent documentary, about the infamous Brooklyn dive bar Hank’s Saloon, celebrated its World Premiere at Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn on January 26, 2026. You can watch the teaser and find much more info here.
In November 2025, my first-ever photography show, “Professional Exhibitionist”, debuted—along with an accompanying book and mini documentary—as part of the group show IN•HABIT, held at Gallery 198 in Brooklyn.
As a professional video editor, I’m proud to have worked on Seayoon Jeong‘s experimental feature Nyctophobia, which won Outstanding Editing at the 2024 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival. I also did initial editing on the Lola Rocknrolla documentary The Big 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 at Alamo Drafthouse in New York City in the fall of 2022.
Since December 2022, I have worked as Videographer for the queer drag collective Switch n’ Play, where I have borne witness to some of the world’s most outlandish live acts, including a performance by “Drag Race” alum Sasha Velour at Lincoln Center. I have also done live video work for the hip-hop-themed Boombox Burlesque Festival, and I filmed and edited several reality-style promo videos for the plus-sized burlesque group Bounce House.
You can see much more of my video work—including many of my own original creations—on my Movies page.
Prior to making movies, I fronted the Brooklyn 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”, which won Best Location a the 2013 Couch by Couchwest Festival.
I am also the author of the stage play “The Last Carburetor”, which enjoyed two Off-Off-Broadway runs in New York City in the early 2000s, and was published in the anthologies Plays and Playwrights 2003 and The Best Women’s Stage Monologues of 2002
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.