Malene Schjønning is a Danish filmmaker working between Copenhagen and New York City. Her work focuses on narrative, rhythm, and performance with particular attention to how meaning emerges between images and through the relationship between image and sound.
Malene holds an MFA in Post-Production from Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, CUNY, Brooklyn College. She is the recipient of the NY Women in Film & Television Emerging Female Filmmaker Award. Her work has been screened internationally, including at the New York Short Film Festival, the 40 NORTH International Dance Film Festival, and the Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival. Excerpts from her short documentary Contra Shock were on exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York’s Urban Stomp: Dreams & Defiance on the Dance Floor, April 2025 to February 2026.
Before transitioning to filmmaking, she had an extensive career as a dancer, performing at the Royal Danish Theater and on Danish National Television. She studied at LABAN in London, the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio in New York, and formed her own dance troop which performed at many New York venues, including Arts-On-The-Hudson.
She recently completed the work on the short film In the Studio wth Chase a collaboration with dancer and choreographer Claude CJ Johnson.
Selected work can be found on IMDb.
Contra Shock
Producer · Cinematographer · Editor, 2018
Excerpts from Contra Shock were exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York as part of Urban Stomp: Dreams & Defiance on the Dance Floor (April 2025 – February 2026).