Cauleen Smith Movies

A young woman in a photography class begins taking pictures of black men out of fear they will soon be extinct.

Three women in Hollywood talk to the camera one summer (with a coda six months later). Sara is a casting director; her soliloquies are addressed to...

Smith interweaves the figure of the crow through the histories of Syracuse and Auburn, New York, both of which were key stations on the Underground...

Mythical forms embodied in puppetry and cinematic spectacle.

"Remote Viewing" is a story in which a man related that, as a boy, he had watched the whites in his town attempt to obliterate every trace of the...

An Alien is sent to earth to investigate the "incubators." She discovers that she is replacing a rogue agent. She questions her mission.

Night Sky is the story of two friends' journey through the desert into a synesthetic realm of the senses. After their car breaks down, Cleo and Jay...

Short film commissioned by the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo, Norway

Part of a multi-platform project highlighted by an hour long documentary about black filmmakers who worked and studied at UCLA between 1965 and the...

A collection of 14 short films that all revolve around Sun Ra and his time in Chicago

The word bone translates to yoruba as “bones.” In Egungun: Ancestor Can’t Find Me, a shell-covered sea creature swims emerges form...

Entitled, a correspondence with historical still life painters. Super-8 transferred to digital video “Smith has developed a lyrical visual...

The imagery of the film is of volcanic scenes in various life stages, from pouring magma to inert mountain, with colors unnaturally saturated –...

A lyrical visual poem on movement, time, and wandering.

Sun Ra’s anthem Space Is the Place performed by The Rich South High School Marching Band in Chinatown Square, Chicago. Cauleen Smith organised...

A found footage assemblage of epic proportions. Produced on residency at Chicago Film Archives, with music by The Eternals.

Three monologues adapted from the groundbreaking book, Black Women in White America, edited by Gerda Lerner.

Daily Rains is a measured, poetic work that confronts head-on the micro- and macro-aggressions faced by young Black women. Restored by the Academy...

The obligatory pilgrimage to Goreé Island is almost like visitng an oracle. Everyone hears something different, and what was heard is nearly...

Back in 2018 I invited an intergenerational group of women to help me make some moving-images in Noah Purifoy’s Desert Museum in Joshua Tree....