Cauleen Smith Movies

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...

Mythical forms embodied in puppetry and cinematic spectacle.

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...

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...

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

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

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

"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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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...