CAMRA PROJECTS

Re-Covering the Ney Collection

Multimodal exhibit at Marian Anderson Gallery at Van Pelt Library

Re-Covering the Ney Collection features a set of four reed-flute instruments brought from Egypt during the nineteenth century along with contemporary research on new organology and ethno-musicology. 

The exhibit is curated by Juan Castrillón, Doctoral Candidate in Music and CEE Graduate Certificate Student
Film completed and on the festival circuit 2019-2020.
Making Sweet Tea

​​Making Sweet Tea is a feature-length (90 minutes) documentary film that chronicles the journey of southern-born, Black gay researcher and performer, E. Patrick Johnson, as he travels home to North Carolina to come to terms with his past, and to Georgia, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C. to reconnect with six Black gay men he interviewed for his book, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South--An Oral History.

Directors: John L. Jackson Jr. and Nora Gross
Executive Producers: John L. Jackson Jr. and E. Patrick Johnson
Grounds that Shout!  (And Others Merely Shaking)

​CEE/CAMRA will document a collaborative residency between Partners for Sacred Places, Philadelphia Contemporary, and award-winning choreographer Reggie Wilson.  The project, funded by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, is called Grounds that Shout!  (And Others Merely Shaking).  Grounds that Shout! Will be a series of performances exploring relationships among religion, movement, race, and the body, with a focus on the African American religious experience and the specific context of Philadelphia’s historic sacred spaces. Wilson will curate performances by Philadelphia-based artists at religious sites along the Lombard Street corridor—host to a unique density of historic churches—highlighting both the broad narrative history of these spaces and their present-day status in a rapidly changing city. The project extends Wilson’s recent work with New York’s Danspace Project interrogating the history of St. Mark’s Church. Danspace’s Judy Hussie-Taylor will serve as a curatorial advisor to Wilson as he brings these concepts to Philadelphia. The series will conclude with a week-long residency by Wilson and his Fist and Heel Performance Group at the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia.
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Photo credit: Jessica Griffin for the Philadelphia Inquirer
Director: Tiffany Smith, Graduate Student in Masters of Liberal Arts Program, University of Pennsylvania

In collaboration with Philly-based production company Draulhaus

Film in progress; expected completion end of 2020
WERK: Exploring the Code-Switching Experiences of Black Women in Predominantly White Workspaces

WERK: Exploring the Code-Switching Experiences of Black Women in Predominantly White Workspaces is a qualitative research project and documentary film about the code-switching experiences of professional Black women in predominantly white workspaces. Given that Black women have been in the workforce longer than any other group of women but are still severely underpaid and the least likely to be promoted in professional workspaces compared to their counterparts, WERK will explore both the internal and external factors that contribute to the pressures Black women face to downplay or cover up their differences at work. By sharing the stories and experiences of professional Black women in both a historical context and in the framework of diverse fields, this project hopes to acquire insight on how corporations can dismantle behavioral barriers that prohibit underrepresented minorities from gaining access and opportunities in professional workspaces and advancing true diversity and inclusion.
​What the Garden Belongs To
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​What the Garden Belongs To is a composition of field recordings made at the Growing Home Community Gardens in Philadelphia, PA. The community gardens were started in 2010 and are primarily managed and maintained by Southeast Asian migrants— Nepali, Bhutanese, Burmese Chin, Karen Burmese, and Kachin— who have migrated to South Philadelphia over the past 20 years, many under refugee status. This composition uses recordings made in the ground, water, and air to challenge familiar categories like urban, natural, infrastructural, human and nonhuman, and to prod at our understandings of belonging, place, and nature in the context of the city.

Creator: Jake Nussbaum
PhD Candidate, Anthropology
Listen to the full recording here:
A trailer. Find out more at www.camrapenn.org/ourphiladelphia.
Our Philadelphia

Our Philadelphia is a collaboratively made documentary film about the impacts of neighborhood gun violence on a group of adolescent boys who attend a high school in West Philadelphia. The boys vulnerably share their experiences with grief after the deaths of friends and discuss how this has shaped them and their school.

A collaboration between Nora Gross, students and alumni from Boys' Latin of Philadelphia Charter High School, and Draulhaus Productions.

Funded by a grant from the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation and the Center for Experimental Ethnography
Rupture/Repair and Black Women Moving

Jasmine Blanks Jones and OreOluwa Badaki presented at Howard University's Nankama African Dance Conference on February 8th, 2020. The year's conference was "a call to action for scholars of diverse disciplines to investigate the narratives that exist in the dances of Africa and the African Diaspora". Jasmine and OreOluwa'a presentation, entitled "Rupture/Repair and Black Women Moving" extended work from a "Black Women Moving" Workshop Practicum taught last year by CEE Fellow, Dr. Aimee Cox and brought together ideas around the intersections of embodiment, movement, art, and research that were to be explored during SSMF 2020. 
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OreOluwa Badaki and Jasmine Blanks Jones | Photo cred: Araaku Abiola
~Kiraiñia (Long Flutes)

~Kiraiñia (Long Flutes) is an essay film about how an instrument sounds like. The film is a deep immersion into the process of remaking instruments and affect in an Amazonian community living at the Uaupés River Valley in Southern Colombia. The film constitutes the Multimodal chapter of a doctoral dissertation in ethnomusicology

Director: Juan Castrillón, Doctoral Candidate in Music and CEE Graduate Certificate Student

Other Multimodal Projects at Penn

Photovoice Project with Transgender Youth

CEE is collaborating with Nadia Dowshen (Penn Med) and Joshua Franklin (MD-PhD student) on a photovoice project with transgender youth.  This project seeks to make use of multi-modal techniques in order to work collaboratively to develop a community-driven agenda for transgender health research, to identify targets and strategies for developing new tailored interventions for trans women, and to use multimodal ethnography in the dissemination of public health research findings on HIV prevention and treatment within the trans community.

Find more information here.
Fortress
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Composed entirely of home videos, “Fortress” is a short coming-of-age documentary that reflects on the effects of domestic violence and the power of faith. At age 10, having learned of the marital unrest between her parents, Geeta took it upon herself to become her mother’s protector. For the next two decades, until her mother passed away, Geeta, fueled by an unshakable love for God she found early in life, completely dedicated herself to her mother. “Fortress” is, ultimately, an ode to Geeta.

Director: Joshua Joel Anthony
MFA Candidate, Stuart Weitzman School of Design
A.M.A. - Against Medical Advice
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"A.M.A. - Against Medical Advice", a monologue that takes place over a one-week stay in a neonatal intensive care unit of a hospital. In a society where the mortality rate for black mothers is rising, the monologue will be used as a demonstrative tool to educate health care providers and breakdown their inherent bias.

Writer and Director: Nikki Brake-Sillá
Project Manager Hematology/Oncology, University of Pennsylvania

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STAND WITH HONG KONG: SOUNDING PAIN AND ROAR THROUGH THE LENNON WALLS 

Colourful “Lennon Walls” have sprung up across districts in Hong Kong during the ongoing Anti-Extradition Bill Protests and Pro-Democracy Protests. Messages and posters on the Walls reveal Hongkongers’ dissent and the scenes of police brutality censored by certain Beijing-backed media outlets. The Lennon Wall spaces amalgamate with sites of battle in the city. Some Lennon Walls are located in or near the protest sites, others spring up in everyday residential areas—at all sites, however, the brightly coloured sticky notes display the tears, pain, suffering, complex emotions and experiences of the Hong Kong people, as well as wishes for a democratic Hong Kong. In front of the Lennon Walls in residential areas, some citizens discuss politics with their neighbours; many of these residents read and write messages, and some of them were violently attacked by pro-Beijing supporters. The complex spaces of the Hong Kong Lennon Walls have also been recreated in dozens of cities across the world. These overseas Lennon Walls build up new relations with people outside Hong Kong through their very physical presence, forming international alliances and solidarity. This interactive installation, a set of sounding mobile Lennon Walls, aims to (1) create the complex spaces and relations of the Hong Kong Lennon Walls; and (2) provide a setting that allows those outside Hong Kong to learn about people’s struggle in Hong Kong via sensory experience. The audience will write their messages on colourful sticky notes on the Lennon Walls, listen to audio tracks recorded in the protests, and, hopefully, realize the reasons why Hongkongers have been fighting for freedom for months under oppression.

Creator: Winnie W. C. Lai
​PhD Student in Ethnomusicology, University of Pennsylvania
Dear Nyakio

Dear Nyakio is a short film about a family navigating life despite distance and borders, that highlights the lengths it takes to maintain bonds. It tacitly explores migration, the immigration process and the shadow it casts on family life.

Director: Nyakio Ndicu 
Undergraduate Student, Anthropology
​University of Pennsylvania