Cinema of the Oppressed

In 2012, I along w/ Julian Walker founded Kinfolk Collective, a collection black artists and scholars researching the nexus between black cultural production and liberation politics. As an educator and filmmaker, I unpack this in my work by uncovering and uplifting divergent cinematic vernaculars produced from the lived experience of oppressed persons. I see visual albums (Lemonade, Black America Again), music videos, (Chief Keef to Missy), and meme culture (social media challenges to Vine appropriations) as cinematic forms pioneered by members of the African Diaspora and worthy of critical and creative reflection. Thinking about these things, I developed workshops, lectures and a traveling screening series interrogating competing notions of the 'cinematic'.

Cinema as Rhythm and Poetry Experimental Film Workshop

This project centered workshop engages participants in experimental and guerrilla filmmaking to develop their own cinematic language.

Selected Writing

​

Black Cinematic Vernacular Screening Series

Kinfolk Collective utilizes ethnomusicology, critical theory, and traditional African cosmologies to inform the structure and visual language of our cinema. The program includes a collection of 6 short films, music performances and a panel/group lecture discussing Black Cinematic Vernacular.

CV

Professional, educational, and artist history

SELECTED SCREENINGS, AWARDS, HIGHLIGHTS

• 2016 Black Star Film Festival

• 2015 Collected Voices Chicago Ethnographic Film Festival

• AMFM The Jazz Series Remixed

• Ferguson is the Future: Speculative Arts & Social Justice Conference

• 2015 Black World Cinema New Short Film Works

• 2015 AFROPUNK/Black Radical Imagination

• 2015 New Orleans Film Festival

• 2015 Beverly Arts Center Student Film Festival

• 2013 Albert P. Weismann Award

• 2013 Rosebud Award

• Published in Maple Leaf Rag IV

• Published in 2009 New Voices Literary Journal

• 2009 Truman Capote Literary Trust Award

•  2008 Scripps Howard Grant

2017