The Filmmakers
Garrett Bradley
Garrett Bradley works across narrative, documentary, and experimental modes of filmmaking to address race, class, familial relationships, social justice, southern culture, and the history of film in the United States. Her first New York solo exhibition, Projects: Garrett Bradley (2019–20) was presented as part of a multi-year partnership between The Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2020, Bradley became the first Black American woman to receive Best Director at the Sundance Film Festival for her first feature-length documentary, Time, which went on to be nominated for Best Documentary at the 2021 Academy Awards.
Sueli Maxakali
Sueli Maxakali is a filmmaker, artist, and photographer. She co-directed the films Quando os yãmiy vêm dançar conosco: When the yãmiy come to dance with us (2011), Yãmiyhex: The Women-Spirit (2019) and Nuhu Yãgmu Yõg Hãm: This Land Is Our Land! (2020). She published the photo book Koxuk Xop Imagem (Beco do Azougue Editorial, 2009), with photographs of the Maxakali women on the rituals and daily life of Aldeia Verde. She's one of the invited artists for the 29th São Paulo Art Biennal.
Grace Passô
The Brazilian Grace Passô has authorial creations in theater and cinema, in addition to creating in partnership with multidisciplinary artists. She has been awarded numerous times as an actress, playwright, and director. The film Vaga Carne explores immersion into the sound dimensions of the spoken word. From griot to vocalist of theatrical texts, she has experimented with inventions that challenge stable notions of language.
Sudanese Film Group | Suliman Elnour
Documentary film director Suliman Elnour graduated from VGIK Film Institute, Moscow in 1978. He studied Folklore at the African and Asian Institute, University of Khartoum in 1981. He is a member of the Sudan Cinema Club, Sudanese Film Group, and the Cinema quarterly magazine editorial board. He has made several films for Sudanese Civil Society organizations. He translated Beginnings of Black African Cinema from Russian into Arabic.
Isaac Julien
Artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien CBE RA was born in 1960 in London. His multi-screen film installations and photographs incorporate different artistic disciplines to create a poetic and unique visual language. They are in the collections of Tate, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; the LUMA Foundation, Arles; the Kramlich Collection; the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art (Zeitz MOCAA), Cape Town.
Mark Nash
Mark Nash is an independent curator and writer specializing in film theory and film culture. He was editor of Screen 1977–1981. He has worked with Isaac Julien on several projects such as the film Frantz Fanon: Black Skin White Masks (1996) and the exhibition Reimagining October at Calvert 22. He collaborated with Okwui Enwezor on The Short Century exhibition and Documenta11. Amongst his latest curatorial projects are One Sixth of the Earth at ZKM, and Grief and Grievance at the New Museum.
Morgan Quaintance
Morgan Quaintance is a London-based artist and writer. His work has been shown widely at festivals and institutions including MOMA, New York; Mcevoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco; Konsthall C, Sweden; David Dale, Glasgow; European Media Art Festival, Germany; Alchemy Film and Arts Festival, Scotland; Images Festival, Toronto; International Film Festival Rotterdam; and Third Horizon Film Festival, Miami.
Over the past ten years, his critically incisive writings on contemporary art, aesthetics, and their socio-political contexts have been featured in publications including Art Monthly, the Wire, and the Guardian, helping shape the landscape of discourse and debate in the UK.
Sudanese Film Group | Eltayeb Mahdi |
Award-winning screen-writer, director, and film critic Eltayeb Mahdi graduated from the Higher Institute of Cinema in Cairo in 1977. He worked at Sudan Film Unit, Cinema Section, ART Television, College of Music and Drama, and was President of the Sudan Cinema Club, President of the Sudanese Film Group, and editorial member of the quarterly magazine Cinema. Mahdi has made several short films and the feature film Sit-in.
Isael Maxakali
Isael Maxakali is a filmmaker, educator and visual artist. He directed the films Tatakox (2007); Xokxop pet (2009); Yi'ax Ka'ax - Fim do Resguardo (2010); Xupapoynãg (2011); Kotkuphi (2011); Yãmîy (2011); Mîmãnãm (2011); Quando os yãmîy vêm dançar conosco (2011); Kakxop pit hãmkoxuk xop te yũmũgãhã: Iniciação dos filhos dos espíritos da terra (2015), Konãgxeka: o Dilúvio Maxakali (2016), Yãmiyhex: as mulheres-espírito (2019), and Nuhu Yãgmu Yõg Hãm: This Land Is Our Land! (2020). He won the PIPA Online Award in 2020, one of the main contemporary art awards in Brazil.
André Novais Oliveira
Born in Belo Horizonte, André Novais Oliveira is a director and screenwriter. He has a bachelor's degree and a degree in History from the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais–PUC-Minas. He directed the short films Fantasmas, Pouco mais de um mês, Rua Ataléia and Quintal and the feature films Ela volta na Quinta and Temporada. Along with Gabriel Martins, Maurílio Martins, and Thiago Macêdo Correia, he is a partner at the production company Filmes de Plástico from Minas Gerais.
Athi-Patra Ruga
Athi-Patra Ruga is one of the few artists working in South Africa today whose work has adopted the trope of myth as a contemporary response to the post-apartheid era. Ruga creates alternative identities and uses these avatars as a way to parody and critique the existing political and social status quo. Ruga’s artistic approach of creating myths and alternate realities is in some way an attempt to view the traumas of the last 200 years of colonial history from a place of detachment – at a farsighted distance where wounds can be contemplated outside of personalized grief and subjective defensiveness.
Sudanese Film Group | Ibrahim Shaddad
Award-winning writer, director, and researcher Ibrahim Shaddad studied filmmaking in Germany and works in Sudan in cinema, television, theater, and popular culture. Some of his works were banned by different regimes. He has adamantly contested official cultural policies and fought for the freedom of expression and film exhibition.