Ja'Tovia Gary

Ja'Tovia M. Gary is an American artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York.

Ja'Tovia Gary
Born
Dallas, Texas
NationalityAmerican
EducationSchool of Visual Arts, Brooklyn College
Notable work
An Ecstatic Experience (2015)
No Homo (2013)
StyleDirector, Artist
AwardsNew Orleans Film Festival Audience Award, Best Experimental Short (2018)
New Orleans Film Festival Special Jury Award (2016)
Websitehttps://www.jatovia.com/

Biography and career

Gary was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, in a Pentecostal church community. Before becoming a filmmaker, Gary pursued a professional career in acting, but she soon became disheartened by the reductive roles and characters that she was offered in the film industry.[1] In Filmmaker magazine, Gary described this disillusionment as an impetus for her shift from acting to filmmaking: "I was getting debasing roles. In Grand Theft Auto IV, I was the voice of a drug dealer's battered girlfriend, and you as a player would opt to save me or not. I wanted control over my image."[2]

Gary's work seeks to liberate the distorted histories through which Black life is often viewed, while fleshing out a nuanced and multivalent Black interiority. Through documentary film, archival footage, and experimental video art, Gary charts the ways in which structures of power shape our perceptions around representation, race, gender, sexuality, and violence.[3] Gary has also focused on themes such as black feminist subjectivity and has confronted the often painful history of these subjects by featuring archival footage in her work. In conversation with Michael B. Gillespie, a film theorist and historian at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, Gary describes her process:

I am simultaneously creating and destroying, remaking and unmaking. My intimate interaction with the archive... expresses my desire to be a part of it, to make my presence felt in and on that history while also interrogating it.[4]

Gillespie notes that "Gary renders film blackness as cinema in the wake, an assemblage of work that poses new circuits and aesthetic accountings of blackness, sociality, and obliteration."[4]

In June 2013, Gary was among the founding members of the New Negress Film Society, a collective of black women filmmakers that seeks to create a community and raise awareness of black female voices and stories in the film industry.[5]

Gary earned her MFA in Social Documentary Filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts. She also completed a Dual Bachelor of Arts in Documentary Film Production and Africana Studies at Brooklyn College. Gary also holds a Documentary Filmmaking Certificate from the LV Prasad Academy in Chennai, India.[6]

The artist's professional production credits include post-production and archival assistant for Spike Lee's Bad 25 and Shola Lynch's Free Angela and All Political Prisoners,[7] as well as assistant editor on Jackie Robinson, a two-part biographical documentary directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, which premiered April 2016 on PBS.[8]

She has taught at The New School and Mono No Aware in New York City.[9]

Gary was a 2018–2019 Radcliffe-Harvard Film Study Center fellow at Harvard University.[10] She is represented by the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, and by the Galerie Frank Elbaz in Paris.[11]

Exhibitions

Gary's work has been screened internationally at venues such as the Ann Arbor Film Festival,[12] the Edinburgh International Film Festival,[13] Frameline, the New Orleans Film Festival, Gdansk Animation Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, and Tampere Film Festival.[6] Gary's work has been exhibited at cultural institutions worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen in New York City, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, MoMA PS1, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others.[6]

In 2020, Los Angeles's Hammer Museum and the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York each presented Gary's experimental film The Giverny Document.[14]

Awards

Gary's work has earned her a Creative Capital award,[15] as well as support from DOC Society, the Jerome Foundation, and Sundance Institute. In 2016, Gary participated in the Terra Summer Residency program, in Giverny, France.[10]

In 2017, Gary was named one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Filmmaking in Filmmaker Magazine.[2]

Permanent collections

Gary's work is held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art,[16] Art, Design & Architecture Museum of UC Santa Barbara,[17] Studio Museum of Harlem, and, the Memorial Art Gallery.[18] Gary's work is part of The On February 26, 2018, the Whitney released a video by artist Shellyne Rodriguez where she responds and discusses Gary's film An Ecstatic Experience.[19]

Filmography

Documentaries
Year Film Role
2010 Sound Rite Writer, director, editor
2012 Deconstructing Your Mother Writer, director, editor
2013 Cakes Da Killa: No Homo Writer, director, editor
2013 Women's Work Writer, director, editor
2015 An Ecstatic Experience Writer, director, editor
2017 The Evidence of Things Not Seen[20] Writer, director, editor
in production The Evidence of Things Not Seen (feature film) Writer, director, editor

Music videos
Year Video Role
2013 Cakes Da Killa "Goodie Goodies" Director, Editor

Other work

In 2008, Gary appeared in Grand Theft Auto IV as Cherise Glover, the random encounters character.[21]

Year Film Production Company Role
2012 Shola Lynch's Free Angela and All Political Prisoners RealSide Productions Post Production Assistant
2012 Spike Lee's Bad 25 40 Acres and a Mule Archival Researcher
2015 The Jackie Robinson Film Project Florentine Films Assistant Editor
2016 Black Girl Magic Short documentary Essence Magazine Editor

Awards and nominations
Year Award Category Work Result Ref.
2011 Brooklyn College Film Festival Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Film Deconstructing Your MotherWon
2012 CUNY Film Festival 2nd Place Deconstructing Your MotherWon
2014 Ann Arbor Film Festival Audience Awards Cakes Da Killa: NO HOMO Won [22]
2015 Sundance Documentary Fund Production Grant The Evidence of Things Not SeenWon
2015 The Jerome Foundation Production Grant The Evidence of Things Not SeenWon [23]
2016 BritDoc Genesis Film Grant The Evidence of Things Not SeenWon
2016 Rooftop Films/TCS Camera Package Grant The Evidence of Things Not SeenWon
2016 New Orleans Film Festival Special Jury Award An Ecstatic ExperienceWon
2016 Haverhill Experimental Film Festival Jury Award An Ecstatic ExperienceWon
2017 The Free History Project Sarah Jacobson Grant The Evidence of Things Not SeenWon [24]
2017 Filmmaker Magazine 25 New Faces of Independent Filmmaking Won [2]
2018 Firelight Next Step Production Grant Won
2018 New Orleans Film Festival Special Jury Mention, Best Experimental Short Giverny I (Négresse Impériale)Won [25]
2018New Orleans Film FestivalAudience Award, Best Experimental ShortGiverny I (Négresse Impériale)Won[25]

References
  1. "This Artist Is Shifting The Status Quo To Magnify Marginalized Voices". UPROXX. 2018-05-24. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
  2. "Ja'Tovia Gary, 25 New Faces of Independent Film 2017 | Filmmaker Magazine". Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
  3. "Biography - Ja'Tovia Gary". Ja'Tovia Gary. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
  4. "Cinema Notes / American Letters / Elizabeth Reich, Courtney R. Baker, and Michael B. Gillespie - ASAP/J". ASAP/J. 2017-06-22. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
  5. "New Negress Film Society - about". newnegressfilmsociety.com. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
  6. "Ja'Tovia Gary". Paula Cooper Gallery. Retrieved March 2, 2020.
  7. "Cinema Today — Film Blackness: Screening of various films by Frances Bodomo and Ja'Tovia Gary". Lewis Center for the Arts. Retrieved 2020-03-02.
  8. Greenberger, Alex (2020-02-21). "With Her Artful Documentaries and Sculptural Arrays, Ja'Tovia Gary Places Black Women at the Center". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2020-03-02.
  9. "DIRECT FILMMAKING ANIMATION TECHNIQUES". Mono No Aware. Retrieved March 2, 2020.
  10. "Ja'Tovia Gary". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. 2018-04-05. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
  11. Selvin, Claire (2019-06-03). "Paula Cooper Gallery Now Represents Ja'Tovia M. Gary". ARTnews. Retrieved 2019-09-20.
  12. "52ND AAFF AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS". aaff. Retrieved 2019-09-20.
  13. "Giverny I (NÉGRESSE IMPÉRIALE)". www.edfilmfest.org.uk. Retrieved 2019-09-20.
  14. Dozier, Ayanna (February 3, 2020). "Sound Garden". Artforum. Retrieved March 2, 2020.
  15. "The Evidence of Things Not Seen". Creative Capital. Retrieved 2019-02-24.
  16. http://collection.whitney.org/artist/17572/Ja'ToviaGary
  17. "Giverny I (NEGRESSE IMPERIALE)". finearts.museum.ucsb.edu. Retrieved 2019-11-27.
  18. "Ja'Tovia Gary". Memorial Art Gallery. Retrieved 2019-11-27.
  19. "An Incomplete History of Protest: Shellyne Rodriguez on Ja'Tovia Gary". whitney.org.
  20. "The Evidence of Things Not Seen". Tribeca Film Institute.
  21. "Ja'Tovia Gary Games Profile". Metacritic. Retrieved March 2, 2020.
  22. "52nd AAFF Audience Award Winners". Ann Arbor Film Festival. July 10, 2014.
  23. "Past Grantees". The Jerome Foundation. Retrieved 2019-02-24.
  24. "Sarah Jacobson Film Grant | Free History Project". freehistoryproject.org. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
  25. "Awards and Jurors | New Orleans Film Society". New Orleans Film Society. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
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