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This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Christopher Harris makes films and video installations that read African American historiography through the poetics and aesthetics of experimental cinema. His work employs manually and photo-chemically altered appropriated moving images, staged re-enactments of archival artifacts and interrogations of documentary conventions. His current project is a series of optically-printed 16mm experimental films in conversation with canonical works of African-American literature. He is a F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor for the Department of Cinematic Arts at the University of Iowa.

His international exhibitions include a career retrospective at the Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival (Brazil), solo screenings at the Museum of Modern Art, Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland), Images Festival (Toronto), Encontro de Cinema Negro (Rio de Janeiro), Arsenal-Institute for Film and Video (Berlin) and a solo performance at the Essay Film Festival (London). Among his many awards, he most recently received Prismatic Ground’s second annual Ground Glass Award for outstanding contribution in the field of experimental media.

Specific film program forthcoming.

Free and open to all. 

Major sponsorship comes from the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, UI International Programs, the Stanley-UI Foundation Support Organization, and the Office of the Vice President for Research Arts and Humanities Initiative Program. Generous supporters include FilmScene, the UI Stanley Museum of Art, the UI Department of Cinematic Arts, and the UI Department of Spanish & Portuguese.