Ja'Tovia Gary

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Ja'Tovia Gary
Ja'Tovia Gary in 2014
Born
Dallas, Texas
NationalityAmerican
EducationBrooklyn College (BA)
School of Visual Arts (MFA)
Known forFilmmaking, interdisciplinary art
Notable workThe Giverny Document (2019)
AwardsNew Orleans Film Festival Audience Award, Best Experimental Short (2018)
New Orleans Film Festival Special Jury Award (2016)
Websitehttps://www.jatovia.com/

Ja'Tovia Gary is an American artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is held in the permanent collections at the Whitney Museum, Studio Museum of Harlem, and others. She is best known for her documentary film The Giverny Document (2019), which received awards including the Moving Ahead Award at the Locarno Film Festival,[1] the Juror Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Best Experimental Film at the Blackstar Film Festival, and the Douglas Edwards Experimental Film Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.[2]

Early life and education[edit]

Gary was born in Dallas, Texas and raised in the nearby suburb of Cedar Hill,[2] in a Pentecostal church community.[3] As a student she was active in local theatre programs and went on to receive her diploma from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.[2]

Gary pursued a professional career in acting but she soon became disheartened by the reductive roles and characters that she was offered.[3] She then enrolled at Brooklyn College and completed a dual bachelor of art degree in Documentary Film Production and Africana Studies.[2]

She later received her MFA in Social Documentary Filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts. She also holds a Documentary Filmmaking Certificate from the LV Prasad Academy in Chennai, India.[4]

Career[edit]

Filmmaking[edit]

Gary's work has focused on themes such as black feminist subjectivity and has confronted the history of these subjects by featuring archival footage in her work. Her 2015 short film An Ecstatic Experience combined clips of actress Ruby Dee with an interview of Assata Shakur, using a technique she called "direct animation."[2]

In 2016, Gary participated in the Terra Summer Residency program, in Giverny, France.[5] During that time, she produced her short film Giverny I (Négresse Impériale), which combined video clips of herself with the footage filmed by Philando Castile's girlfriend shortly after he was shot by a police officer. The film is also included in her 2019 documentary The Giverny Document that explores what it means to live life as a Black woman. The film received critical acclaim and garnered awards from festivals including the Blackstar Film Festival and Locarno International Film Festival.[2]

In conversation with Michael B. Gillespie, a film theorist and historian at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, Gary described 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."[6] Gillespie noted 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."[6]

Gary worked as a 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]

Her work has received financial support including the Creative Capital award,[9] support from the DOC Society, the Jerome Foundation, Rooftop Films, the Free History Project, BritDOC, and the Sundance Institute.[10] In 2022 she received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.[11]

Other work[edit]

Gary in a short film made in a 2014 Mono No Aware workshop

In 2008, Gary appeared in Grand Theft Auto IV as Cherise Glover, the random encounters character.[12]

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.[13]

She has taught at The New School and Mono No Aware in New York City.[14]

Gary was a 2018–2019 Radcliffe-Harvard Film Study Center fellow at Harvard University.[5] She is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, and by Galerie Frank Elbaz in Paris.[15]

Exhibitions[edit]

Gary's work has screened at venues such as the Ann Arbor Film Festival,[16] the Edinburgh International Film Festival,[17] Frameline, the New Orleans Film Festival, Gdansk Animation Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, and Tampere Film Festival.[4] Gary's work has been exhibited at cultural institutions 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.[4]

In 2020, Los Angeles's Hammer Museum and the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York presented Gary's experimental film The Giverny Document.[18]

Permanent collections[edit]

Gary's work is held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art,[19] Art, Design & Architecture Museum of UC Santa Barbara,[20] Studio Museum of Harlem, the Thoma Foundation,[21] and the Memorial Art Gallery.[22] On February 26, 2018, the Whitney released a video by artist Shellyne Rodriguez where she responds and discusses Gary's film An Ecstatic Experience.[23]

Accolades[edit]

Filmography[edit]

Documentaries[edit]

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[26] Writer, director, editor
2019 The Giverny Document Writer, director
in production The Evidence of Things Not Seen (feature film) Writer, director, editor

Music videos[edit]

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

Other work[edit]

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

Video games[edit]

Year Game Game Publisher Role
2008 Grand Theft Auto IV Rockstar Games Cherise Glover

Awards and nominations[edit]

Year Award Category Work Result Ref.
2011 Brooklyn College Film Festival Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Film Deconstructing Your Mother Won
2012 CUNY Film Festival 2nd Place Won
2014 Ann Arbor Film Festival Audience Awards Cakes Da Killa: NO HOMO Won [27]
2016 New Orleans Film Festival Special Jury Award An Ecstatic Experience Won [28]
2016 Haverhill Experimental Film Festival Jury Award Won
2018 New Orleans Film Festival Special Jury Mention, Best Experimental Short Giverny I (Négresse Impériale) Won [29]
2018 New Orleans Film Festival Audience Award, Best Experimental Short Won [29]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Locarno Film Festival 2019 winners revealed".
  2. ^ a b c d e f Gyarkye, Lovia (2020-08-10). "The Artist and Filmmaker Envisioning a Safer World for Black Women". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-12-02.
  3. ^ a b "This Artist Is Shifting The Status Quo To Magnify Marginalized Voices". UPROXX. 2018-05-24. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
  4. ^ a b c "Ja'Tovia Gary". Paula Cooper Gallery. Retrieved March 2, 2020.
  5. ^ a b c "Ja'Tovia Gary". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. 2018-04-05. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
  6. ^ a b "Cinema Notes / American Letters / Elizabeth Reich, Courtney R. Baker, and Michael B. Gillespie - ASAP/J". ASAP/J. 2017-06-22. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
  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. ^ a b "The Evidence of Things Not Seen". Creative Capital. Retrieved 2019-02-24.
  10. ^ ""Doc Society".
  11. ^ "Guggenheim Announces 2022 Fellowship Recipients". ArtForum. 8 April 2022. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
  12. ^ "Ja'Tovia Gary Games Profile". Metacritic. Retrieved March 2, 2020.
  13. ^ "New Negress Film Society - about". newnegressfilmsociety.com. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
  14. ^ "DIRECT FILMMAKING ANIMATION TECHNIQUES". Mono No Aware. Retrieved March 2, 2020.
  15. ^ Selvin, Claire (2019-06-03). "Paula Cooper Gallery Now Represents Ja'Tovia M. Gary". ARTnews. Retrieved 2019-09-20.
  16. ^ "52ND AAFF AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS". aaff. 10 July 2014. Retrieved 2019-09-20.
  17. ^ "Giverny I (NÉGRESSE IMPÉRIALE)". www.edfilmfest.org.uk. Retrieved 2019-09-20.
  18. ^ Dozier, Ayanna (February 3, 2020). "Sound Garden". Artforum. Retrieved March 2, 2020.
  19. ^ "Ja'Tovia Gary".
  20. ^ "Giverny I (NEGRESSE IMPERIALE)". finearts.museum.ucsb.edu. Retrieved 2019-11-27.
  21. ^ "Citational Ethics (Saidiya Hartman, 2017) | Thoma Foundation". thomafoundation.org. Retrieved 2022-01-22.
  22. ^ "Ja'Tovia Gary". Memorial Art Gallery. Retrieved 2019-11-27.
  23. ^ "An Incomplete History of Protest: Shellyne Rodriguez on Ja'Tovia Gary". whitney.org.
  24. ^ "Ja'Tovia Gary, 25 New Faces of Independent Film 2017 | Filmmaker Magazine". Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
  25. ^ "Ja'Tovia Monique Gary". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2022-04-28.
  26. ^ "The Evidence of Things Not Seen". Tribeca Film Institute.
  27. ^ "52nd AAFF Audience Award Winners". Ann Arbor Film Festival. July 10, 2014.
  28. ^ ″"Ja'Tovia Gary - Artists - Paula Cooper Gallery".
  29. ^ a b "Awards and Jurors | New Orleans Film Society". New Orleans Film Society. Retrieved 2018-11-21.

External links[edit]

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