Biography
Aiming to create a third cinematic space or consciousness, Akosua Adoma Owusu explores the colliding identities of black immigrants in America through multiple forms, ranging from cinematic essays to experimental narratives to reconstructed Black popular media. In her works, feminism and African identities interact in African, white American and black American cultural spaces.
Since 2005, Owusu's films have screened internationally in festivals and museums, including the New York Film Festival, Berlinale Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Locarno International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, and the BFI London Film Festival. Her recent projects include Welcome to the Jungle (2019), a multi-channel video installation made in collaboration with the CCA Wattis Institute.
Her work can be found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Fowler Museum at UCLA, among others.
Owusu's awards and grants include the Gardner Film Study Fellowship (2021), the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists (2020), Camargo Foundation Fellowship (2016), Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2015), Africa Movie Academy Award (2013), MacDowell Colony fellowship (2013) and Creative Capital fellowship (2012).
She holds a BA in Media Studies and Studio Art from the University of Virginia (2005) and an MFA in Fine Art as well as Film and Video from the California Institute of the Arts (2008).
Born in 1984 in Alexandria, US, Owusu currently lives and works in Bronx, New York.
SAF Participation:
Sharjah Film Platform 4 (2021)
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SFP4 Talks and Workshops
Sharjah Film Platform (SFP) offers a programme of talks on cinema and artists’ moving image as well as sessions addressing current debates in the film industry. A programme of workshops for children and families aims to teach children about the various aspects of filmmaking, such as screenwriting, storyboarding, lighting, filming and production.