In 2005, Lise Swenson was named Filmmaker in Residence at San Francisco Arts Commission and was the inaugural Artist in Residency at the new de Young museum. In 2007 she completed production on "Strange Culture", a film by Lynn Hershman Leeson. Swenson served as producer and assistant director on this ground-breaking combination documentary and fiction feature film which launched its festival run with a premier at Sundance, followed by multiple screenings at high profile international festivals and a theatrical release and is now available on DVD.

Swenson's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and she has received numerous awards and grants, including the San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award for outstanding achievement in film and video in 1999. Swenson was also the recipient of a Creative Work Fund grant which enabled her to seed production on her first feature length social justice film. "Mission Movie" released in 2004, is a fictional adaptation of true-life stories from the Mission District of San Francisco. Mission Movie went on to screen at 20 festivals internationally, winning five awards, two for Best of Festival.

In 1984 she co-founded and co-directed ATA, (Artists' Television Access), a non-profit media arts access and education facility. She then went on to serve for many years on the ATA board as President and was also a Film Arts Foundation board member and a member of the SF Art Institute Artists' Committee. In 1995 Swenson founded TILT (Teaching Intermedia Literacy Tools), a nonprofit that works within school programs and community organizations to teach the fundamentals of media literacy and moviemaking. She has also been teaching filmmaking and experimental fine art practices at the college level since 1987.

Lise Swenson has been an active member in the media arts of the Bay Area since the early 1980s. As a filmmaker she creates documentaries, experimental documentaries, feature length fiction and short experimental video art works. Swenson also creates multi-monitor video art works and video installations built in response to specific sites. Her themes encompass a vast range of human interaction and emotion while she works both autonomously and in collaboration with both artists and non-artists alike.

Today Swenson is working on her latest feature film, "Saltwater" which is slated to start principal photography March 2nd, 2008. While the film is in production it is supported by the Film House Residency, which grants free office space in downtown San Francisco to filmmakers through the San Francisco Film Commission and the San Francisco Film Society.