Brendon Marotta is a filmmaker, author, public speaker, and father. His last film, American Circumcision, won multiple awards and played on Netflix. He is the author of four books, The Intactivist Guidebook, The Haunting of Bob Cratchit, Children’s Justice, and The Gods of AI. He has spoken at Yale University, the International Conference on Men’s Issues, the International Symposium on Genital Autonomy and Children’s Rights, and the Association for Pre and Perinatal Psychology. Brendon hosts a regular podcast called The Brendon Marotta Show and writes online at the substack Hegemon Media. He is creating music and art under the name Strange Aura using AI. He currently lives with his family in Austin, TX.
Longer Bio:
Brendon Marotta first became interested in filmmaking at age fourteen, after watching a film critic break down the original Star Wars trilogy shot by shot. In high school, he began working as a P.A. on low-budget horror films and directed and edited over thirty short video projects. Brendon graduated from the University of the North Carolina School of the Arts in 2010 with a B.F.A. in film editing & sound, where he worked in every major role on a film set.
In 2013, he completed a year-long Meisner Acting program at the Waterfront Playhouse & Conservatory. In 2014, a feature he edited was selected to premiere at the Austin Film Festival where it won the Narrative Feature Audience Award. In 2017, he completed American Circumcision, his first feature-length documentary as director, which won multiple awards at film festivals, toured across the country and played on Netflix. The film is currently available on Vimeo, Amazon, and iTunes.
Brendon has spoken across the world at multiple conferences including Yale University, the International Congress for Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology, International Conference on Men’s Issues, and International Symposium on Genital Autonomy and Children’s Rights.
In 2020, he published his first non-fiction book, The Intactivist Guidebook, which offers strategies for social change. He also co-wrote a novel with his father called The Haunting of Bob Cratchit, a book inspired by Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, which tells the story of how Tiny Tim’s father was also haunted by three ghosts on the same night Ebeneezer Scrooge was. In 2022, he published Children’s Justice, which explores the treatment of children as a social justice issue using critical theory, and The Gods of AI, which uses AI art to explore spiritual concepts and human consciousness.
In addition to his artistic accomplishments, Brendon has an interest in healing and change work. He has studied hypnosis and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). In 2019, he became a certified practitioner of the Completion Process, a method for resolving emotional trauma. Brendon got married during the summer of 2020, had his first child in 2021.
In 2021, Brendon launched his podcast The Brendon Marotta Show, which has over 40 episodes on a children’s issues and related topics. In 2022, he launched his substack Hegemon Media, where he writes about social issues. Brendon Marotta been learning AI tools since 2022. In 2024, Brendon began producing music under the name Strange Aura using AI. He has released over four albums, and multiple singles. You can listen to Strange Aura on all music platforms here.
Brendon Marotta currently lives with his family in Austin, TX.