Events Calendar

A Black Lives on Screen special event.

The panel will focus on intersections of filmmaking and Black identity, gender, and expression from Black Womxn perspectives. Highlighting the ways Black Womxn claim space with the use of film across disciplines, this panel discussion features film scholar Terri Francis (Indiana University), artist/filmmaker T.J. Dedeaux-Norris (UI-SAAH), and actor/filmmaker  Britny Horton (UI-Theatre).

Organized by the Cinematic Arts Graduate Students. Hosted by Trevon J Coleman (UI-Cinematic Arts).

T.J. Dedeaux-Norris aka Tameka Jenean Norris was born in Guam and received her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles before graduating with an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2012. Norris has recently participated in numerous exhibitions and festivals including at Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; Yerba Buena Museum, San Francisco, CA; Prospect.3 Biennial, New Orleans, LA; The Walker Museum, Minneapolis, MN; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX; and The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY, Rotterdam Film Festival, Rotterdam,Netherlands, Sundance Film Festival, New York, NY, Mission Creek Festival, Iowa City, IA among many others. Norris has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Fountainhead Residency, Grant Wood Colony Fellowship, and The MacDowell Colony. She is the 2017 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a tenure track Assistant Professor at University of Iowa.

Terri Francis teaches film studies courses and directs the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University. She is a scholar of Black film and critical race theory whose work involves archival research, cultural history, and visual analysis, set within the vicissitudes of performance and representation. Francis published her research on Jamaican nontheatrical films as “Sounding the Nation: Martin Rennalls and the Jamaica Film Unit, 1951–1961” in Film History in 2011, and she guest edited a close-up on Afrosurrealism for Black Camera in 2013. Francis is the author of Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism (Indiana University Press, forthcoming), and her essays appear in Transition and Another Gaze. Francis has worked to animate the Black Film Center/Archive as a living, breathing center of new and offbeat ideas about Black film. She has curated the film series “Race Swap,” “Black Sun/White Moon,” and “Love! I’m in Love!” and the speaker series “Black Film Nontheatrical and before Representation.”

Britny J. Horton is an art-ivist from Rochester, NY. Upon graduating from Spelman College and the British American Drama Academy, Britny began working for theaters and film and TV productions across the country. Britny worked as a Casting Associate for five years before pursuing her MFA at the University of Iowa ('21). Britny is dedicated to her training and considers it an honor to explore and refine her art. Her most recent credits include Hit the Wall (University of Iowa), SWEAT (University of Iowa) Men on Boats (Riverside Theatre), and Too Heavy for Your Pocket (Pyramid Theatre), YesToday (film), Incensed (Film), and Lights On (Film). In 2020, she produced the first film under her production company Curvy Confidence. In 2019, Britny won the Best Actress in a Play Award from Broadway World Des Moines for her portrayal of Evelyn in Too Heavy for Your Pocket. She recently launched a body-positivity podcast named Curvy Confidence. It is her goal to use her art to spread body-positive messages by playing and creating roles that challenge the standards of beauty and further incite the empowerment of black women.