With our Three Short Films by Ja’Tovia Gary collection now playing on the Criterion Channel, read Beandrea July in conversation with the artist and filmmaker about her aesthetically dynamic, shape-shifting work. 💚 Read on with the link in our bio!
THREE SHORT FILMS BY JA'TOVIA GARY • Now playing on the Criterion Channel!
The artist and filmmaker's aesthetically dynamic, shape-shifting films combine everything from heavily processed 16mm archival materials to TikTok videos and woman-on-the-street-style interviews to put Black women and their lived experiences, past and present, in dialogue with one another. Drawing inspiration from Gary’s personal heroes like Toni Morrison and Nina Simone—footage of both of whom she poignantly incorporates into her works—her films are as optically imaginative as they are politically and intellectually rigorous, exploring ideas around care, connectivity, and memory through an intimate, Black feminist lens.
Pictured here:
AN ECSTATIC EXPERIENCE (2015)
THE GIVERNY DOCUMENT (2019)
QUIET AS IT'S KEPT (2023)
we’re currently available for viewing on @criterionchannel
(don’t say i neva gave yall nothin😉)
so many thanks to @_ash_clark , Aliza Ma, and all the folks at Criterion for helping to expand the viewership of these works.
as always much love and gratitude to all the collaborators on each of these projects.
continued thanks to the great mother 🌊
light, peace, and progress to our ancestor. may she rest peacefully. 🕯️
i fear we are not prepared for what is HERE, not what is coming, but what is HERE. my prayer is that we can gather the strength, love, courage, clarity, and organization of our venerated ancestors.
focus yourselves. An excerpt from the documentary EYES OF THE RAINBOW (1997), directed by Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando. I first saw this film as a teenager in Dallas, Texas. A black woman by the name of Marilyn Clark ran a screening program at the South Dallas Cultural Center called Black Cinématique. Thank God for her and for them!
Join @kinfolktech and @blackwomenradicals on Tuesday September 9 at 6:30pm ET for Maroon Archives, a virtual teach-in event featuring Black artists, activists, archivists, creatives, and scholars—Aleia Brown (@collardstudies ), Nadege Green (@blackmiamidade ), Ja’Tovia Gary (@j_______g_______ ), and Siddisse Negero (@kyky.archives )—who will speak on the power, present, and futurity of Black archives, Marronage, and the politics of memory.
This panel discussion will emphasize the importance of Black Diasporic archival strategies as critical tools for narrative power and (re)construction; will interrogate the politics, possibilities, pitfalls, and limitations of memory work and archival recovery in the Diaspora; and will discuss how archival and political practice(s) offer insights on Black fugitivity, worldbuilding, solidarity, refuge, and even contradictions and queries across digital and physical modalities.
This event is free and open to the public. To RSVP and find more details about this event and the featured panelists check out the Dreaming with the Archives event calendar link in the @kinfolktech bio.
lately.
Thank you to Dr. Tanisha Ford @soulistaphd who is just so wonderfully smart, kind, AND pretty for including myself and my good, good, good sis Fatima Jamal @fatfemme in the latest edition of Aperture. check the link in my stories.
Been traveling and working a bit. Here’s a few snaps as evidence.
I hope you’re focusing on your breathing.
🦚🪩
“I’m interested in pulling back the layers and understanding the multivalent aspects of my lived experience—be it Black, be it woman, be it queer.”
—Ja’Tovia Gary, 2025 #alpertawardartist in Film/Video
A Dallas-born, NYC-based filmmaker and moving image artist, Gary crafts layered, essayistic works that collapse the personal and political. Her practice spans 16mm, Super 8, archival material, and glitch—centering the body as both vessel and subject.
🎥 Selected work: An excerpt from Quiet As It’s Kept—a formally experimental meditation on beauty, madness, memory, and self-definition.
Immense gratitude and respect to the @herbalpertaward for this honor and support. Love to the jury and the nominator (whoever you may be). I appreciate you!
Look at this fantastic cohort of artists!
Modupe Orisha
Modupe Egun
🌊
My favorite thing about Brother Malcolm aside from his unflinching courage in the face of white delusion and unchecked brutality, was his miraculous ability to transform himself over and over again. His life was dynamic and capacious. He knew that it was important to be gentle and patient with the student, “because there was once a time when you didn’t know the things you know now.” Malcolm’s schools were life, prison, and faith. He once said, “my sincerity is my credential.” He will forever be a model to me of what true fearlessness looks like, and that is the ability to “surrender to the transformation”.
We honor this example of dignity and disciple and give thanks for his spirit.
🕯️
I spent about three months in New Orleans, eating good but sleeping poorly because I felt the breath of spirit on the back of my neck. Sensitivity, for better and for worse, was at an all time high. While there I learned a little bit about spiritual hygiene and what it means to truly get clean. Right now, when the world seems to be descending further into chaos i’m giving thanks to my teachers, mentors, and elders for the modalities and knowledge they have equipped me with in order to stay spiritually clean and grounded in clarity, focus, and the light of truth. A spiritual bath and some prayer can go a looooong way. It’s got me to wondering though, what sort of power can we generate when we welcome spirit into our political awareness and organizing efforts?
I don’t know much, these are just notions. But i will say this: protect your neck, good people cause it’s finna heat up.
🌊
The artwork is by the great @alison_saar , Ms. Betye’s daughter. The piece is called Washtub Blues. I’m drawn to it because it reminds me of myself right before I douse my head with that mixture I make to keep calm, cool, and collected.
New York City! I’d like to cordially invite you (your friends + family) to a FREE theatrical screening of our @pbs / @independentlens original series Dallas, 2019 at @bamfilmbrooklyn !
We are blessed to have the brilliant and gracious multidisciplinary artist + filmmaker @j_______g_______ as the moderator of our post screening discussion.
Join us, Wednesday, February 5th at 6pm for a community conversation. Special thanks to Gina Duncan and Jesse Trussell at @bam_brooklyn for giving us the opportunity to share this soul work with the City of New York for FREE!
BAM RSVP Link in bio! ❤️
