Cauleen Smith

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...

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...

Explores the careers of twenty black women working as film directors.

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

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

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

“Chronicles of a Lying Spirit (by Kelly Gabron) is less a depiction of 'reality' than an exploration of the implications of the mediation of...

A time-lapse documentation of Lee filter film gels installed into the windows of the Dusable Museum of African American History's Roundhouse designed...

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

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...

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

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

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

H-E-L-L-O translates the famous musical sequence from Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind into a greeting for sites around New...

Sine at the Canyon Sine at the Sea began as a video designed to be background eye-candy at an outdoor performance event and evolved into a protest...

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

The countdown audio footage from the Apollo 11 launch date is heard over a flamed-out, iridescent landscape. Appropriating and reframing the...

"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...

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....

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...

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

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

Personal pilgrimages to three sites of extreme creativity, invention, and generosity: Alice Coltrane's Ashram, Watts Towers, and Watervliet Shaker...

Personal pilgrimages to three sites of extreme creativity, invention, and generosity: Alice Coltrane's Ashram, Watts Towers, and Watervliet Shaker...

Mythical forms embodied in puppetry and cinematic spectacle.

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

Choreographer Taisha Paggett activates a vacant lot in the Washington Park Neighborhood on the southside of Chicago and enjoys an encounter with...

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

Set in Noah Purifoy’s Outdoor Desert Art Museum in Joshua Tree, California, artist Cauleen Smith reimagines this unique space as a radical...

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

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

Images and poems responding to the photographs of Malik Sidié. A collaboration with poet, A. Van Jordan. Loops designed for install.

Science Fiction rumination of post-Katrina New Orleans: space, place and post traumatic stress. Executive produced by Paul Chan and Creativetime.

Second of three films relating to American conceptual Land Art of the 1970's and American histories and traumas.

The syntax of cinema collides with string theory and the unchanging sameness of movies, romance, horror, and landscape.

A global portrait documenting the year's events, Cinetracts '20 features the work of an international lineup of 20 filmmakers. Capturing the...

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

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...