Akosua Adoma Owusu (b. 1984)
Birthplace:
Alexandria, Virginia, USA
Born:
January 1, 1984
Akosua Adoma Owusu (b. 1984) is a Ghanaian-American filmmaker, producer, and cinematographer whose films address the collision of identities. Interpreting the notion of "double consciousness," coined by sociologist and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois to define the experience of black Americans negotiating selfhood in the face of discrimination and cultural dislocation, Owusu aims to create a third cinematic space or consciousness. In her works, feminism, queerness, and African identities interact in African, white American, and black American cultural environments. Named by Indiewire as one of 6 pre-eminent Avant-Garde Female Filmmakers Who Redefined Cinema, she was a featured artist of the 56th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar programmed by renowned critic and film curator Dennis Lim. Owusu has exhibited worldwide including at the Berlinale, Rotterdam, Locarno, Toronto, New Directors/New Films (New York), and the BFI London Film Festival. She has won numerous fellowships and grants including from the Guggenheim Foundation, Westridge Foundation, Knight Foundation, Creative Capital, MacDowell Colony, Camargo Foundation and most recently from the Residency Program of the Goethe-Institut Salvador-Bahia. Currently, she divides her time between Ghana and New York, where she works as an Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Akosua Adoma Owusu is represented by Andrew Farber at Farber Law LLC.