Sophia Nahli Allison, visiting documentarian, filmmaker:
“Radical Reimaginings in Documentary Filmmaking”
Sophia Nahli Allison will screen her short hybrid documentary, A Love Song for Latasha, as well as a few shorter documentary works. The evening’s discussion will center on reimagining documentary and the archives, finding one’s style and voice, and the utilization of experimental methods within film.
Sophia Nahli Allison is an experimental documentary filmmaker, photographer + dreamer born and raised in South Central LA. She disrupts conventional documentary methods by reimagining the archives and excavating hidden truths. She conjures ancestral memories to explore the intersection of fiction and nonfiction storytelling. Her film A Love Song for Latasha premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. She was a 2018 Sundance Institute New Frontier Lab Programs Fellow and a recipient of a 2018 Glassbreaker Films Catalyst Grant. She will be a summer 2019 artist-in-residence with POV Spark’s African Interactive Art Residency and a 2019 interdisciplinary arts fellow at the MacDowell Colony. Past residencies include the Center for Photography at Woodstock and a 3Arts Residency Fellow at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. Sophia received a 2018 Getty Bursary Creative Grant, was named the 2017 Student Video Photographer of the Year by the White House Photographers Association, and is the recipient of a 2014 Chicago 3Arts Award. She was a co-coordinator and facilitator for the 2018 Allied Media Conference’s Magic as Resistance Track, which focused on community healing and the art of reclaiming ancestral magic for QTPOC (Queer and Trans People of Color) participants. She holds an MA in visual communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BA in photojournalism from Columbia College Chicago.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) exploring the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted, and is free and open to the public.
