presents - Program in Arts of the Moving Image

ALUMNI FILMMAKER
HOMECOMING SERIES
presents
An Evening with Nikyatu Jusu ‘05
AFRICAN BOOTY SCRATCHER
2007 | 13 min | Color | Digital
Prom nears, and things seem to be spiralling out of control for the
typically composed Isatu. In this coming of age story, West African
tradition conflicts with American idealism, and Isatu is forced to
reassess her alliances.
SAY GRACE BEFORE DROWNING
2011 | 17 min | Color | Digital
After meeting her African refugee mother for the first time
in six years, 8-year-old Hawa is forced to coexist with a
woman teetering on the brink of insanity.
Director's Guild of America Jury Award
HBO Film Award
BLACK SWAN THEORY
2012 | 11 min | Color | Digital
A psychiatric casualty of war recently returned to the US,
Sonya’s imagined sense of normalcy crumbles around her.
Struggling for money, she agrees to execute a "murder for
hire" assignment with dire consequences.
SUICIDE BY SUNLIGHT
2013 | 2 min | Color | Digital
Daywalking black vampyres protected by added melanin
roam modern day NYC. Rayn, a half vamp+half human hybrid,
rejects her vampyre lineage while hunting for the right
human sperm donor.
SUNDAY
MAR 23RD
7 PM
RICHARD WHITE
AUDITORIUM
Free and Open
to the Public!
About the Filmmaker: Sierra Leonean-American filmmaker Nikyatu Jusu's short
films have played at festivals nationally and internationally, garnering her NYU’s
prestigious Spike Lee Fellowship Award, the Princess Grace Foundation Narrative
film grant, and Director’s Guild of America Honorable Mentions, to name a few. A
graduate of Duke University, Jusu studied narrative filmmaking at New York
University’s MFA film program and lives and teaches in Brooklyn, NY.
Two of her short films, African Booty Scratcher and Say Grace Before Drowning, were
acquired by and aired on HBO. Presently, she is developing a feature film, Free The
Town, to be shot on location in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The project was
hand-selected for Africa’s most prestigious film market: the 2013 Durban Film Mart.
It was also one of 5 narrative films selected for Film Independent's Fast Track and
one of 25 projects selected for IFP’s Emerging Storyteller’s Project Forum Slate. The
screenplay participated in Sundance Institute’s inaugural Diversity Initiative.
Sponsored by the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts
http://ami.duke.edu/screensociety/schedule