CAMRA is pleased to host the 2026 Screening Scholarship Media Festival (SSMF): Portals.
This year, SSMF will explore and experiment with the idea of Portals: spiritual, virtual, historical, (meta)physical, and technological. Embodying the act of crossing boundaries, shifting perceptions, and navigating between worlds, portals act as gateways between what is and what might be. We understand Portals not just as literal doorways or entry points, but as intersections where multiple realities, experiences, and dimensions converge. As such, this theme encompasses a range of projects and perspectives that explore the notion of portals across diverse mediums, disciplines, and traditions.
Join us as we collectively unlock new dimensions of knowledge, connection, and possibility.
This year, SSMF will explore and experiment with the idea of Portals: spiritual, virtual, historical, (meta)physical, and technological. Embodying the act of crossing boundaries, shifting perceptions, and navigating between worlds, portals act as gateways between what is and what might be. We understand Portals not just as literal doorways or entry points, but as intersections where multiple realities, experiences, and dimensions converge. As such, this theme encompasses a range of projects and perspectives that explore the notion of portals across diverse mediums, disciplines, and traditions.
Join us as we collectively unlock new dimensions of knowledge, connection, and possibility.
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Friday, March 27th
Opening Performance | Penn Museum's Widener Auditorium @ 7:00PM SSMF 2026 will begin with an opening musical performance featuring pianist and singer-songwriter Black Buttafly. Her sonic practice invites audiences into a space of emotional truth, hope, and creative vulnerability, setting the tone for a festival that explores portals as sites of passage and possibility. Register for the SSMF Opening Performance here! Saturday, March 28th Multimodal Conference | Annenberg School for Communication from 9:00AM - 5:30PM This portion of the festival brings together scholars, artists, educators, and cultural workers to explore how knowledge is made through performance, film, sound, visual art, and experimental forms. Panels and workshops will feature work that refuses the separation of theory and practice, highlighting the affordances of multimodal scholarship to create space for memory, political struggle, and creative world-making. The Multimodal Conference Program is now available Keynote | Annenberg School for Communication, Room 110 @ 1:00PM Following lunch, CAMRA welcomes founder and executive director of The Colored Girls Museum, Vashti Dubois for a keynote speech. She will discuss her transcendent curatorial practice, which assembles contemporary art, intimate archives, and creative technologies to create "a sanctuary for the ordinary colored girl of the African diaspora." Register for the Multimodal Conference portion of SSMF here! Closing | The Arts League @ 7:00PM SSMF 2026 will conclude with a closing performance by South African-born, Philly-based poet and scholar Katleho Shoro. The closing will offer a gathering and an opportunity to reflect on how we might carry the festival's energies forward. Register for the SSMF Closing Performance here! |
Registration is free, but required for entrance to EACH festival event, as they have varying capacity.
